Margaret Mehl (Dr. Phil. (Bonn), Dr. Phil. (Copenhagen)) is Associate Professor in the Asian Section of the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Her main interest is the cultural history of Japan in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her published monographs include Private Academies of Chinese Learning in Meiji Japan: the Decline and Transformation of the kangaku juku. (NIAS Press, 2003). Her most recent articles are, ‘Cultural Translation in Two Directions: The Suzuki Method in Japan and Germany’, Research & Issues in Music Education 7.1 (2009), ‘Japan's Early Twentieth-Century Violin Boom’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review 7/1, (2010) and ‘A Man's Job? The Kôda Sisters, Violin Playing and Gender Stereotypes in the Introduction of Western Music in Japan’, Women's History Review 21:1 (2012). She has recently completed a manuscript about the history of the violin in the musical culture of Japan.

Tsukahara Yasuko is Professor of Japanese Music History at Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan. She was born in Hokkaido in 1957, and granted her PhD degree in musicology from the Tokyo University of the Arts in 1990. Her book Jûkyû Seiki no Nihon ni Okeru Seiyô Ongaku no Juyô [Reception of Western Music in Nineteenth Century Japan], based on her dissertation, received the Kyoto Music Prize in 1993 and the Tanabe Hisao Prize in 1994. Her recent book Meiji Kokka to Gagaku [The Meiji State and Gagaku] also received the Tanabe Hisao Prize in 2010. Her other works include Nihon no Dentô Geinô Kôza -Ongaku- [Japanese Traditional Arts – Music], which she co-authored. She is particularly interested in the historical changes of traditional Japanese music (especially gagaku) and the reception of Western music after the Meiji restoration.

Hermann Gottschewski studied piano at Musikhochschule Freiburg i.Br. and musicology, mathematics and Japanese studies at the University of Freiburg, gaining a DPhil. in Musicology 1993, and his Habilitation at Humboldt University of Berlin, 2000. He has held fellowships at Ochanomizu University, Harvard University and the University of Tokyo. Since 2004 he has been Associate Professor at the Department of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies at the University of Tokyo. He was awarded the Ohmiya Makoto Music Prize in 1997. Gottschewski's main research fields are theory and analysis of musical performance and modern history of music in East Asia, focusing on the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Recently he has focused on Japanese–Korean relations in music and musicology. He has published books and articles in German, Japanese, English and Korean. Gottschewski has also active as a composer.

Kiku Day (PhD, London; MFA, Mills; BA, London) is an ethnomusicologist and shakuhachi player. She has been a teaching fellow at SOAS, University of London and external lecturer at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research has been mainly performance based, and has focused in particular on the potential use of the jinashi shakuhach in contemporary performance. Several composers from different parts of the world have written for her, including Takahashi Yūji, Roxanna Panufnik, Frank Denyer and Mogens Christensen. Teaching methods online and the online dissemination of the shakuhachi internationally, and the interest in the link between shakuhachi and Zen Buddhism have also attracted her interest. Dr Day learned the shakuhachi with Okuda Atsuya for more than a decade in Japan and since her return to Europe has dedicated her life to the dissemination of the shakuhachi on that continent. She is a founding member of the European Shakuhachi Society, which she currently serves as chairperson. She has performed with performers such as Fred Frith and Joanna MacGregor and as a soloist with Odense Symphony Orchestra and with the Nonsuch Choir.

EnaKajino is a professional violinist and a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature and Culture in the Department of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies at the University of Tokyo. She holds a Master of Music degree in Violin Performance at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg. Following her studies, she established her career as a concert violinist and a violin instructor in Japan, Europe and Canada. In 2007, she enrolled as a research student at the University of Tokyo. Her main research interest is violin culture of Japan in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ms. Kajino is the author and editor of Kishi kōichi to ongaku no kindai [Kishi Kōichi and music of modern times] (Tokyo: Seikyūsha, 2011). In addition, she has published various articles addressing related topics in magazines. Her first CD, of Robert Schumann's three violin sonatas, is scheduled to be released in 2014.