Musicians of Asian descent enjoy unprecedented prominence in concert halls, conservatories and classical music performance competitions. This book looks into the reasons for this phenomenon. It shows how a confluence of culture, politics and commerce after the war made classical music a staple in middle-class households.

In the first book to account for the growing prominence of Asians in the world of Western classical music, Mari Yoshihara grapples with the significance of this trend. This is a book about the about the origins of a social and cultural phenomenon, but it is also about the lives and work of individual musicians devoted to their art.