Lorraine Plourde's Tokyo Listening is a remarkable contribution to the ever-expanding literature in Sound Studies.Footnote ¹ With a focus on acousmatic sound, affect, and attunement, Plourde argues that the ‘urban sensorium’ allows ‘noises and ambient sounds [to] serve as the foundation upon which listeners experience the city’ (3). In doing so, she rightly presents Tokyo in particular as a sound-saturated sociality with varied sensory input at every turn (3). Tokyo is a particularly potent urban centre in which to locate this study, with its vibrant personality and innovative design. Nevertheless, long understood as a visually impactful city, past studies of Tokyo have neglected the role of sound in the overall sensory experience. Plourde, however, highlights specific examples of the ways in which sound shapes encounters in three different sites: Offsite, for intense listening and attunement; classical cafés, for relaxation, nostalgia, and loud public listening; and background music (BGM) in multiple locations to increase productivity, build community, and generate feelings of happiness.

Plourde's work is not just an ethnography of these three sites caught in a specific moment in time but rather an analysis of the interconnectedness of Tokyo's urban soundscape and myriad listening practices that shape how inhabitants engage with the world. We may take the act of listening for granted – but the Sound Studies work of authors such as Plourde challenges us as designers, musicians, thinkers, and active participants in the making of sound in cities to think more deeply about hearing and listening.

Plourde does so by first calling attention to the complex ways ‘listeners attune themselves to the sounds and noises of the city … [revealing] an array of techniques for both listening to and in Tokyo’ (2). Distinct urban atmospheres are enhanced by affectively managed sonic-sensory experiences as listeners ‘relax, listen, read, shop, and work’ (2). Plourde thus focuses on a spectrum of public as opposed to private sound: ‘a type of listening wherein listeners are fully exposed to sound in public spaces such as department stores, cafés, offices, and music venues, rather than shutting out sound with private mobile technologies’ (3). Listeners experience cities through a plethora of public sounds, in turn cultivating auditory practices that inform engagement with the ‘urban sensorium’ (3). She further categorizes ‘two distinct types of sonic practices: (1) spaces where music operates in the background and is not something people consciously engage with, and (2) spaces where patrons go to intentionally experience music’ (3). Whether in the background or intentional – public sound is integral to ‘affective management of listeners, consumers, and workers in their environments’ (3). BGM in Japan, for example, is not solely in the background, but rather music targeted to enhance specific purposes. Plourde accordingly is interested in human-created sound – the predetermined saturation of the city with everything from bird calls to signal safe pedestrian crossing at intersections to jingles pouring forth from competing stores on the street. Such sound design is an intentional, capitalist enterprise with ‘Tokyo's soundscape … primarily constituted by technologically mediated acousmatic sounds’ (5). Indeed, Tokyo is alive with sound at every turn.

Plourde positions the sonically rich landscape of contemporary Tokyo in a complex web of urbanity in which ‘[c]ity noises have historically served as sonic markers of progress and modernity, from street barkers to the sounds of industrialization. However, by the early twentieth century this perspective shifted to viewing noise as a nuisance and public health problem similar to smoke pollution’ (5). Tokyo demands this critique, with nearly ubiquitous public sound in so many environments. As a result, quiet and contained atmospheres are notable, such as on packed trains, with etiquette demanding silenced mobile phones and headphones. Plourde's work, however, concentrates ‘on intimate public spaces of listening where people are fully exposed to amplified sound, whether recordings or live performances’ (7). Such purposeful, public listening actually mitigates city noise ‘by focusing on the sensory experience of urban listening as a planned and multifaceted dimension of everyday city life’ (7). Plourde approaches such listening as a fully ‘embodied practice and sensory attunement’ (7). As such, listening and hearing do not just involve our ears, but instead are ‘intensely corporeal processes’ (7–8).

Embodied listening and attunement in the city often result from intentional sound design techniques motivated by ‘consumer capitalism: sound is used to generate affects and produce sociality’ (10). The ability of sound to facilitate commercial transactions is encapsulated in yobikomi: ‘the case of store vendors calling out to customers … which serves as a way to sonically beckon potential customers passing by … [and] the street continues to serve as a vital site for sonic retail practices’ (10). But sound is also an important locus through which people find each other and negotiate the complexity of life in contemporary Tokyo in perhaps unexpected ways. As such, Plourde presents a rich understanding of the potential for sound – in both ‘spaces people go to specifically for the music, and places where the music comes to them’ (11) – to be a powerful, truly essential component in our entire urban sensory experience.

With this framing in place, Plourde dives into her first case study – ‘Learning to Listen to Onkyô: Ear Training as Sensory Attunement’. Located in the unique and now defunct livehouse Offsite,Footnote ² she argues that intense listening changes how listeners hear the city (16). Offsite was a tiny space that created a certain kind of tension, both because sounds had to be contained to avoid bothering the neighbours (not an uncommon practice in Japan) and because the requisite silent, intense listening necessitated a lack of typical social cues and thus no one could actually relax (17). The physicality of Offsite itself encouraged the development of onkyô, an intimate, subdued production of electronic sound suitable to the space, with invading ambient sounds easily impacting listening. She does caution against reading the positive reception of such noise as a potentially Japanese essentialist trait, arguing instead that an appreciation for indistinct sound is better understood as a marker of modernity. This is not genetic but results from a certain set of conditions that allows for ‘active sensory engagement with Tokyo's non-intentional sounds, but simultaneously reject sounds coming from listeners themselves’ (34).

The forced attunement in the space of Offsite in turn impacted how participants then heard the everyday, removed from the restricted sonic confines of the livehouse (19). Drawing on Benjamin and Dada (20–2), Plourde argues that modernity has fostered a distracted listening that the conditions at Offsite combat. The common focus on silence inside Offsite, for example, fostered awareness of ‘the dense soundscape’ surrounding people and ‘provoked new modes of listening’ (34). She argues that ‘as urban noise becomes more immediate and intrusive in public space, perhaps our critical engagement (or disengagement) with city sounds, as in the case of onkyô, will provide the conditions for new sensory engagement with urban soundscapes’ (35). The point is that the focused, intense listening demanded of participants at Offsite actually made people more active listeners to a breadth of sounds in the city outside the confines of the livehouse; it combatted the effect of modernity that has made people disengage from the urban sensorium.

Plourde's second case study – ‘“A Place Where Time Moves Slowly”: Analog Listening in the Music Café’ – tackles in more depth listening as a complete bodily sensation (41). Music cafés feature analogue sound from vinyl records that serves as a ‘sonic patina’ contributing to a ‘nostalgic atmosphere’ (43). Plourde beautifully argues that ‘sonic historicity and traces [are] embedded in the disc itself’ (52) while the architecture of such music cafés is designed to enhance the desired sonic experience. She connects listening, nostalgia, and the body through the ‘extensive staging, so that patrons experience sonic patina in a distinctly tactile matter’ (54). As such, she conceives ‘of sonic patina as an embodied and intersensorial aural experience critical to the production of the café's space that cannot be reduced to the ears alone’ (55). There is social etiquette geared to support this type of intensive listening (e.g. no talking, no use of laptops), which in turn reinforces the embodied sonic experience. Music cafés foster private listening in a public space that affords a certain sociality – another element of patina – as opposed to the disconnection abundant at modern chain coffee shops. In a sense, time slows down when seated, listening in one of these special establishments.

Only analogue vinyl recordings are shared, which ‘serve a critical role in defining the café's antiquarian sonic ambience’ (60). This proscription aligns with audiophiles’ passion for authentic gear and extensive LP collections (60–3) and the café masters select recordings to meet patrons’ affective needs (66–8). In this way, music is de-acousmatized – as the source of sound is instead privileged, highly visible, even celebrated (68). Surprisingly, these seemingly antiquated music cafés continue to survive, not just because of the nostalgia Japanese seek but rather because ‘music cafés draw on the tactile nature of sound (in this case, analog sound) to create sociality and intimacy among patrons’ (73). Similar to Offsite, the atmosphere ‘devoted to mediated listening and nonproductivity’ also leads to greater attunement to the city sounds once one emerges onto the street (46).

Plourde returns to exploring acousmatic sound in her next case study – ‘“Feeling Uncomfortable Without Sound”: Muzak as Affect Management for Office Workers’. Here Plourde presents BGM as a potent agent, ‘now being employed to structure productivity and make post-Fordist workers happier by nurturing their emotional attachment to work and their co-workers’ (78). The idea of enhancing worker productivity with music is not new or exclusive to Tokyo, but for Plourde is ‘used to construct audio environments in retail (and, in the case of Japan, work) settings through the technique of atmospherics and the creation of moods’ (85). A long-time coffee shop patron myself, I find the ability of sonic atmosphere to effect productivity wonderfully encapsulated in Plourde's analysis of the Coffitivity app, which provides a variety of coffee shop background noises on the go to the modern often isolated listener – this too illustrates a patina of sociality (89–90).

Plourde's fieldwork with USEN, a major company that creates and streams BGM, reveals how this type of music is ‘simultaneously unnoticed, dismissed, and appreciated, and is now being used to heal and manage whitecollar office workers’ (79). USEN has developed a wide palette of playlists to create a desired atmosphere and mood including Sound Design for Office (SDO), programming tuneable to the specific needs of diverse workplace environments (80). SDO is believed to impact a range of affective states including concentration, relaxation, refreshment, and awareness.

Not surprisingly, given this sense of affective purpose, unlike the common negative critique in North America, Muzak is not a pejorative term in Japan. This interpretation is enhanced by streaming specific content such as SDO, the aforementioned sonic field that emerged in Japan of the 1990s when a concern for individual well-being intensified in the gloomy post-bubble economy. Both self-reflection and the need for self-care boomed once again following the 3/11 Triple Disaster when Japan suffered an unprecedented earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear catastrophe in March 2011 (81). Then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's neoliberal economic policies are often critiqued as resulting in an increasingly large – and precarious – part-time labour force, resulting in a working poor without bonuses or job security, but with long hours and lots of stress. A sense of hopelessness only intensified after the Triple Disaster, as did ameliorating interventions, of course including affective sonic programming.

In reality, today the use of BGM as affective management is so ubiquitous that spaces without it may be perceived as sad or lonely (sabishii), ‘desolate and unsettling’ (94), and ultimately uncomfortable by the Japanese. In the end, the varied use of acousmatic BGM not only enhances productivity but also counteracts detrimental social threats of contemporary life.

‘Sonic Air Conditioning: Ubiquitous Listening as Mundane Comfort’ – Plourde's final case study – in contrast considers instances when ‘BGM becomes noticed (whether rejected out of annoyance or pleasurably attended to)’ (110). Just as with air conditioning, which makes people comfortable and thus more productive in the work place or inclined to shop, BGM is expected to do something to listeners, even if not actively listening. In addition to USEN, Plourde also conducted ethnographic research at two sound design companies: Tôyô Media Links (TML) and Mood Media. She found that collectively these companies ‘expand the physical boundaries of sound programming in Tokyo's public and private spaces, with a clear focus on spaces that did not previously have sound’ (113). She furthers her argument on the ability of BGM ‘to amplify businesses’ and ‘to trigger a range of affects and associations’ (116). As human beings, we are bombarded with sensory input at every turn with sound now as an expected component of the total sensory experience. Sound is so important in the consumer's mind that Tesla had to add a selection of engine noises to make electric cars more palatable and ergo marketable (117). With such evidence stretching beyond Japan, Plourde successfully argues for the necessity of sound in experiencing design globally.

Companies such as TML and Mood Media offer extremely specialized design (at a premium price), while USEN offers lots of channels to achieve mass appeal. Mood-enhancing playlists are even available in individual homes (not unlike YouTube videos of ‘Music to help you relax’ or ‘study,’ or calling out to Google or Alexa ‘hey [fill-in your device's name], play [fill-in your preferred listening choice]’, which I happen to do on a daily basis). Plourde actually draws a potent parallel between the mass appeal of the clean and simple branding of Mujirushi Ryôhin (Muji) (a well-known ‘no-brand’ store featuring clothing, housewares, even food in simple designs and earthy colours) and BGM. Expanding on this idea of anonymity, Plourde introduces a final intriguing example with Music for Supermarket (2007), an album of 1980s-style elevator music. Everything about the presentation from the jacket design, clothing styles adorning the people in pictures, to sonic offerings is generic. But this is what excites the creators – how the urban sensorium is both ubiquitous and anonymous (131).

Plourde's four case studies are interspersed with three interludes that collectively serve as extensive notes on related topics. She makes clear in ‘City Noise and the Avant-Garde’ (36–40) that drawing on cosmopolitan sources and being inspired by industrial sound are not a uniquely Japanese trait, but a product of the increasing need to negotiate urban noise in the early twentieth century. Japanese artists, such as Yellow Magic Orchestra's Ryuichi Sakamoto and Offsite's Atsuhiro Itô, engaged with the ideology of past Futurist leaders including Luigi Russolo and Filippo Marinetti to expand ways of understanding noise and music, as well as how to hear the city. ‘New Experiences in a New City for New Women: Ambient Sound for Refined Women’ (74–7) further explores the application of gendered sound design, focused on ambient, nature sounds to create a desired environment in a women-only department store's restroom. ‘Retro Shopping Arcades Muzak’ explores covered shopping streets, revealing the ability for BGM to be everywhere but in essence not listened to (103–6). BGM in these cases interestingly is unable to generate memories, yet is quite capable of invoking nostalgia for these spaces and related experiences. The interludes remind us to recognize the impact of all these sounds – whether intended in the intellectual and artistic Offsite, essential in the design of a ladies restroom, or to increase one's desire to shop on any one of many covered streets throughout Japan – on the urban sensorium.

In the concluding ‘Tokyo Listening, Listening to Tokyo’, Plourde makes a most striking argument – given the shear amount of ubiquitous sound in Tokyo, silence equals an absence of life (132–3). This was especially apparent in post-Fukushima Japan, which essentially went silent as public life came to an abrupt halt in the days following the disaster. In contrast, the return of sound signalled a return to normalcy. Sound creates comfort and happiness, affects certainly not unique to Japan, but the meaning of the specific listening practices enacted in the preceding case studies varies widely by location and historical moment.

Plourde's research thus is both very much located in Tokyo of the past two decades but also far reaching in its applications. Her approach to understanding the significance of sound in the city is outstanding. She brings together years of quality ethnographic research (14) and equally expansive knowledge of secondary literature into a thoughtful – and thought provoking – work, which is well organized around the three research sites and four case studies. Varied readers with different specialties and interests can easily engage with her intelligent style and innovative theory, to be sure, the entire work is lively and enjoyable to read. She clearly nursed this project over many years into a solid and important contribution to Sound Studies and even broader anthropological and ethnomusicological studies of Japan.