Japanese Music Therapist Exports American Study to Japan

Music therapy, mental care using music as treatment, is still a new concept in Japan. Atsuko Nadata, 27-year-old woman, is one of the Japanese music therapists who are working in the U.S. while trying to extend the Japanese knowledge of music therapy. She believes in the potential of music to take care of her clients.

At New York Foundling Hospital, Nadata is singing and playing a guitar, while sitting beside a 15-year-old girl. The girl is comatose and can’t attend the classes in the hospital. Her heart rate increases and then she starts to breath in time to Nadata’s song. Nadata is playing with her breath, the girl controls Nadata’s music. Now they are communicating through music. “This means that music can help to improve the quality of her life because she can express her feelings even though she wonders the reason for existing herself,” Nadata said.

Music therapy requires both music skills and medical knowledge. There were some reasons why Nadata chose this profession. At the age of five, she began to play piano. She lost her younger brother to cancer when she was 10 years old. The death made her eager to be a doctor, but she also knew that her mother wanted her to continue to play piano. So she entered Toho Gakuen School of Music, the best music school in Japan: Seiji Ozawa, conductor, is an alumnus. When she was a junior and still wanted to be a doctor, she attended a seminar on music therapy given by New York University. She discovered a vocation in which she could use her music skill and fulfill her wish to be a doctor. However there were no schools where she could study music therapy in Japan. So she came to the U.S.

For the requirement of the MA degree of NYU, The Steinhardt School of Education, Nadata was working at Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center as an intern. One of her clients was a 35-year-old mother. She had breast cancer. Her husband and six children had no idea what to do. Nadata asked them to sing a song or suggested that the patient leave her message to her family on the tape recorder. “The process of choosing a song is also important. I exist there as a container sharing their emotion. If they cry, I would say ‘It’s OK to cry.’ Then they might think that they are not only people who are sorrowful. To share the hard feeling produces a sense of unity. It might affect not only the dying patient but also the bereaved family,” she said.

Even though she is faced dying patients, she is not depressed. It’s because she recognizes death not as “the end” but as “a stage of life” the same as “birth.” We can live valuable life because all of us are dying. She said that we need to understand what fear is for ourselves to face death. She continued, “When a person is close to death, we must honor that person as they are dying, just as we would in earlier stage of life.  I'm honored to help the people.”

Music therapy tends to be considered as only for disabled children or the elderly. However it is effective for mental health care for normal people as well. Some parents and children visit her apartment on the Upper West Side. She can find out about the parent-child relationship through counseling and music performance, for instance, whether mother controls her child. “So I try to guide the child to control the mother in music then the mother realizes what she does to her child,” she said.

Her attitude to clients is flexible but consistent because she respects her clients. “I’m not the person to judge and say ‘You should do this.’ Even though I can not solve the problem, I still can try to find a way with my clients. I might need to hug or just sit next to them. I’m a co-traveler or company, so to speak,” she explained. The best time for her is when her clients open up. “It might be tears or smile. I’m glad when I can convince my clients, who resist or hesitate at the beginning, to trust me from bottom of their hearts,” she said.

She is slender but has strong eyes with self-confidence. It is because she chooses her life not depending on others but by herself. Even though she went to a prestigious high school she was not interested in going to a famous university or being a musician, while other students were eager to do so. So she has suffered severe criticism from teachers and had only a few friends. Her high school teacher said to her, “You are the dregs of mankind.” However, after she won a national essay competition, they changed their attitude dramatically. She was shocked that people could be changed suddenly. “The dreg came to NY!” she laughed, “If I meet the teacher? I have nothing special to tell them. They believed that going to a good university is the best aim of life. I never thought to change their mind. It’s the same as therapy. Nobody can change someone else and decide what is right. Even though I study psychology, I never understand humans completely. I meet my clients only a few hours. However, I’m still able to ‘walk’ with them.”

Currently working in the U.S., she also has a sense of mission to extend the understanding of music therapy in Japan. Every time she goes back to Japan, she felt that Japanese music therapy is still in its early stages. There are few well-trained therapists, and employees can not find the value in music therapy because they lack understanding. So music therapists can not be stable as a profession in Japan. At the same time, there are many Japanese students in America and Europe studying music therapy. Aiming to form the foundation of music therapy, Nadata gives lectures at hospitals when she is back to Japan. “It’s a long way, but I want to spread the understanding. I wish to contribute to Japan,” she said.

Her hobby is ceramic art and oil painting. “I sometimes use color pen in the counseling. Emotion must be revealed with sound, tempo, and color. Everything is connected,” she said.

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