If a composer dies young, there is a danger that his or her works will be forgotten. For a long time, this was the fate of Isotaro Sugata's music as well, after the composer's death from tuberculosis at age 45. Even in the most recent book on Japanese music of the 20th century does not mention his name. Most of Sugata's works were totally unknown until they were rediscovered by his descendants in 1999. It was only last year that his music became available on CD for the first time, thanks to the Naxos label.

Yet Sugata had gotten off to a good start in the 1930s and %u201840s; he was one of the first Japanese composers to respond to the latest European music, attempting a synthesis between these Western influences and native Japanese traditions.

Peaceful Dance of Two Dragons was written in 1940 to celebrate the 2600th anniversary of the Japanese empire; it was performed with great success during the festivities. It was a special occasion, honoured by the Japanese government by commissioning several works by foreign composers. Even Richard Strauss obliged with a festive work; Britten submitted his Sinfonia da requiem, and Sándor Veress (born the same year as Sugata) sent his First Symphony to Japan.
The title of Sugata's work makes reference to one of the compositions in the repertoire of gagaku (Japanese court music) – Nasori, in which two dragons dance in the sunshine. This dance was already mentioned in The Tale of Genji, the 11th-century classic of Japanese literature. Sugata was inspired by this dignified dance, performed in dazzling costumes. He composed his work as though he was familiar with Bartók's analogy between a folksong and a diamond, which receives a new %u201Csetting” from the composer. Sugata preserved the original melody with its characteristic pitch bendings, and the typical accompanying rhythms of the kakko drum, and surrounded these traditional features with modern harmonies and instrumental devices indicating his familiarity with the works of Debussy and Stravinsky.

The dances of the gagaku repertoire normally consist of three parts:  jo-ha-kyu. The first of these is the slow introduction, the second a kind of development, the third the fast closing section. Sugata maintained this tripartite organization; in the final portion of his dragon dance, he alluded to the %u201CBear Dance” from Stravinsky's Petrushka, as if to symbolize the encounter between two cultures.