a process of avoiding European colonialism by accepting western cultural practices and institutions, which was quickly internalized by the Meiji government and the people. American missionaries of the German Reformed Church arrived in Japan in 1879, and in the 1880s set up music departments that offered college-level training in western music, including the piano. In the 1920s, the piano replaced the koto as the preferred instrument for Japanese women to cultivate before marriage. The Taishō-era arist Nakamura Daizaburō painted The Piano in 1926, which depicts his fiancée dressed in a kimono and performing Robert Schumann’s Träumerei on a Russian piano. Playing the piano was adopted in Japan as part of domestic modernity, as opposed to the traditional and pre-modern conception of musicians as social outcasts. The piano became a source of education, spiritual and moral discipline, and cultural capital useful in the marriage market. Decline The piano's status in the home remained secure until technology made possible the enjoyment of music in passive form. First the player piano (c. 1900), then the home phonograph (which became common in the decade before World War I), then the radio (in the 1920s) dealt severe blows to amateur piano-playing as a form of domestic recreation. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, piano sales dropped sharply, and many manufacturers went out of business. Another blow to the piano was the widespread acceptance in the late 20th century of the electronic keyboard. This instrument, in its cheaper forms, is widely considered to provide only a poor substitute for the tonal quality of a good piano (see piano for why), but it is more easily portable, cheaper, much more flexible and in many ways better suited to the performance of popular music. Nevertheless, the piano survives to this day in many 21st-century homes. The pianos being bought today tend to be of higher quality and more expensive than those of several decades ago, suggesting perhaps that domestic piano playing may have concentrated itself in homes of wealthier or better-educated members of the middle class. It is unlikely that ability to play the piano contributes much these days to the marriageability of daughters, but many parents still feel today that piano lessons teach their children concentration and self-discipline, and open a door into the world of classical music. See also Golden Age of the Piano, the period at which the piano enjoyed its greatest popularity as