Credits:

Ekaterina Saranceva

Description:

Hitoshi Osawa was a composer who, despite demonstrating outstanding talent as a Japanese composer during the pre-war and mid-war periods, failed to gain recognition from his contemporaries in the Japanese music world; following his untimely death, his very existence was all but forgotten. Born to an engineer father and a Christian mother, Osawa became familiar with the organ and choral music during his boyhood and learned piano from foreigners who attended his church. Immediately after graduating from the Faculty of Commerce at Kwansei Gakuin University, he went to study in the United States. He enrolled at Boston University and the New England Conservatory of Music to further his studies. In 1934, he traveled to France and enrolled at the cole Normale de Musique, where he studied under Paul Dukas and Nadia Boulanger; he returned to Japan in 1936 and began his career as a composer.His Sy