Takao Umemoto

Takao Umemoto was a Japanese psychologist whose specific interest was music psychology; he was also an academic, and pianist.

Early life

Umemoto was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan (Osaka, 2003). Umemoto's father was a professor in psychology and a practicing Buddhist monk at Higashi-Honganji temple. He valued music and pressed Umemoto to dedicate his youth to music and playing piano. This would later influence his career, inspiring the topics of his research and lectures. He would continue to play piano till his death (Osaka, 2003). The beginning of his career and his early experiments aligned with the direct growth and attention on perception and cognition, present in Japan, after he earned his Ph.D.(Imada et al., 2016).

Career

Umemoto was a lecturer in the department of educational psychology at Kyoto University in Japan before becoming associate professor at the faculty of education at Kyoto University (Osaka, 2003). Much like early psychologists attempting to measure and explore their ideologies and theories, Takao did the same in his research. He published one of his most famous books, ‘Music Psychology’ in 1966 (Osaka, 2003). Umemoto wrote more than 160 articles and published 4 books over his career (Osaka, 2003). Umemoto served as Dean of Kyoto University from 1976 to 1977 (Koyasu, 2002). He initiated the creation of the Association of Music Perception and Cognition in Japan (Osaka, 2003). Due to the positive response to the association, characterized by increase in members and public interest, he organized the first international conference on the subject (Koyasu, 2002).