The Japan Society Review 70
Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review

Issue 70 Volume 12 Number 4 (August 2017)

The August issue of The Japan Society Review opens withreviews of two books, both dealing with the modern historyof Japan from a political-diplomatic perspective. First, theJapan Society Chairman Sir David Warren writes about RobertMorton’s biography of A. B. Mitford, one of the earliest British
diplomats in Japan, who served in the Legation from 1866 to1870. Next, Sir Hugh Cortazzi reviews the memoirs of Oswald
White, Consul in Japan, 1903-1941: Oswald White’s Memoir“All Ambition Spent”, edited by Hugo Read. White came after
A.B. Mitford, serving as consul between 1903 and 1941.
This issue’s historical approach also extends to literary
fiction, starting with Harry Martin’s review of Hidden by the
Leaves, a novel written by S.D.L. Curry and set in early 17th
century Japan. The narrative follows a Catholic priest andtwo of his clergy who, defying the religious persecution of
the time, remain in Japan to help their community. In a more
contemporary setting, Slow Boat, reviewed by Alice French,takes a diary-like form to tell of the protagonist’s experiencesof Tokyo, and of his relationships with his three different
girlfriends.
In the cinema section, our reviewer Roger Macy
writes about the documentary Node, directed by Japanesefilmmaker Koike Atsushi. The film was screened by theJapan Society last February in a joint event with the Royal
Anthropological Institute and offers a careful ethnographic
study of a depopulated village, Hirogawara, in the forested
hills northwest of Kyoto. This issue also includes the review of
Katabuchi Sunao’s In this Corner of this World, an animatedfilm which focuses on the everyday life of young woman inwartime Hiroshima.
Closing The Japan Society Review, our music reviewer
Laurence Green explores the sounds of the new album of Joji
Hirota and The London Taiko Drummers. Creating taiko musicin a new contemporary style, Hirota and his band maintain thegrace and high energy of the instrument’s traditional heritage.
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández

Contents
1)

A. B. Mitford and the Birth of Japan as a Modern State:
Letters Home by Robert Morton

Editor2)

Consul in Japan, 1903-1941. Oswald White’s Memoir ‘All
Ambition Spent’ edited by Hugo Read

Reviewers

3)

Hidden by the Leaves by S.D.L. Curry

4)

Slow Boat by Furukawa Hideo

5)

Node directed by Koike Atsushi

6)

In this Corner of the World directed by Katabuchi Sunao

7)

Japanese Taiko by Joji Hirota & The London Taiko Drummers

Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández
Sir Hugh Cortazzi, Poppy Cosyns, Alice French, Laurence Green, Roger
Macy, Harry Martin and Sir David Warren.
(Image by Moé Sekiya)

A. B. Mitford and the Birthof Japan as a Modern State:
Letters Homeby Robert Morton
Renaissance Books (2017)
ISBN-13: 978-1898823476
Review by Sir David Warren
Algernon Bertram (“Bertie”) Mitford was one of theearliest British diplomats in Japan: he served in theLegation there from 1866 to 1870. He was born into
an aristocratic family of letters. His great-grandfather
William wrote a five-volume History of Greece, andone of his mother, Lady Georgina Ashburnham’s,
ancestors had attended on Charles I on the morningof his execution (the family retained the King’s bloody
shirt as a keepsake, until Mitford’s grandmotherinadvertently washed it). Japan was a small element of
Mitford’s life, but his occasional writings on the country
reached a wide audience in Britain and helped to fuelthe enthusiasm for things Japanese in the 1870s and1880s. Mitford himself left the Foreign Office in 1873.
He was a success as Secretary to the Board of Works(appointed by Disraeli) from 1874 to 1886, when heresigned on inheriting an estate and a fortune fromhis cousin. Thereafter, he concentrated on rebuilding
the estate and garden, and on his writing, publishinghis memoirs in 1915, by which time he had been
elevated to the peerage as the first Baron Redesdale.
He died the following year at the age of 79. He wasan affectionately-regarded member of the aristocraticsociety of his time: ‘he had the dandy’s charm’, as
his admirer Edmund Gosse wrote in his entry in the
Dictionary of National Biography.
Robert Morton’s excellent and readable
biography gives a sympathetic portrait of the man andan evocative study of his life and times. Mitford, like his
friend and colleague Ernest Satow, was an eye-witnessof the events leading up to the Meiji Restorationin 1868. He had arrived in Japan after the clashes at
Kagoshima and Shimonoseki, in which Britain and theother great Powers had asserted their rights under thecommercial Treaties they had forced the Shogun’s
administration to sign as the country opened up in
the 1850s. The foreign Powers’ focus was now on
enforcing trading links. The Shogun’s government
was weak, in the face both of foreign pressure and of
the rebellion of the daimyo (feudal lords), loyal to theEmperor. Some daimyo were determined to follow theEmperor’s call for the foreign barbarians to be expelled.
2

Others, including some younger samurai who had
illegally travelled and studied abroad, saw the valueof acquiring Western know-how as they forged a new
and united Japanese nation. The British, and their main
rivals the French, had to promote their interests in avolatile and uncertain environment, where it was notclear who was in charge or how the struggle for power
would play out.
There was an element of the adventurer anddilettante about Mitford. As a young man about town
in London, his social contacts – he was a friend of the
Prince of Wales – had taken him effortlessly into theForeign Office, although he had chosen to serve in
China and Japan, well outside the traditional charmed
circle of European Chancelleries. He was an excellent
linguist, as Satow observed in his memoirs, and clearly
also a brave and resourceful man. The Minister underwhom he worked in the Legation, Sir Harry Parkes, left
Mitford alone and in charge of the British representationin Osaka from March to July 1868, after the Powers
had presented their credentials to the newly-restored
Emperor Meiji; he discharged his responsibilities very
capably. He was also interested in, and sensitive to, thestrange and unfamiliar culture in which he was now
living and working. The assorted collection of stories
and sketches he published in 1871, Tales of Old Japan,
was admired by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lafcadio
Hearn; and his eye-witness account of a hara-kiri – thefirst published in English – was quoted approvingly
by Japanese authors. While he gave an exaggerated
impression of Japan as a country of great violence andbloodshed, he also helped to give British readers amore human sense of the Japanese people, rooted ina respect for their values and culture.
Mitford’s actual career as a diplomat was brief.
The policy of the British Government in the preMeiji period was one of strict neutrality between the
Shogun and the daimyo, and while ‘it is reasonable tospeculate’, as Robert Morton writes, that Mitford may
have interpreted this flexibly, and sent encouraging
signals to the daimyo that a challenge to the Shogun
would not be unwelcome to the British, there is little
evidence that he was a figure of real influence. Mitford’s
reactions to Japan are often superficial: he recast themost disobliging of them in his later writings. Shortly
after his arrival in Japan, he wrote to his father: ‘I hate theJapanese. Treachery and hatred are the only qualities
which they show to us’. Six months later, he is still
complaining: ‘[Japan] is the most overpraised country
I ever saw ... and as for the people, my contempt forthem is boundless’. In his memoirs, however, heIssue 70, Volume 12, Number 4 (August 2017)

intimates that he fell in love with the country more orless at first sight, after the inevitable disappointmentof arriving in this new fairy land in the pouring rain:‘...suddenly coming in full view of Mount Fuji ... I wascaught by the fever of intoxication ... which burns to thisday, and will continue to burn in my veins to the endof my life’. There is a sentimental streak in his attitude
to Japan. He describes the hara-kiri he witnessed not
as a horrific mediaeval ceremony, but as an act ofself-sacrifice of which a Victorian gentleman could
approve, and the violent ronin marauding around thecountry as ‘somewhat disreputable knights-errant’. Hisvalues are those of the Victorian aristocrat – traditionaland conventional. He bounded between extremes ofenthusiasm and revulsion. The man he was working
for, Sir Harry Parkes, slightly caricatured in this bookas no more than a belligerent brute (although he was
generous in his appreciation of Mitford’s work), wasa harder-headed and ultimately shrewder judge of
where Britain’s interests lay and how to promote them.
In telling Mitford’s story, Robert Morton draws
not only on his published writings and official records,
but also on his letters to his father, uncovered in the
1980s by Sir Hugh Cortazzi. His use of multiple sources
is expert, and he wisely structures the book so as tofocus on Mitford’s years in Japan, in which he was anengaging observer of a fascinating and tumultuous
period of change. And he draws a portrait of Mitford
which is fair and judicious, giving full rein to theman’s generosity of spirit while not ignoring his otherqualities. Mitford was louchely typical of his era inseveral ways. In common with many young foreign
men in Japan, he had a Japanese mistress and fathered
an illegitimate child; and although he had a long andsuccessful marriage, with nine children, he also had
many affairs, including it is believed with his wife’s elder
sister, which may possibly have made him the father of
Clementine Hozier, who married Winston Churchill. It
is unfair to attribute to him the racist attitudes of his
two ghastly grand-daughters, Unity Mitford and Diana
Mosley: he was not an anti-Semite. But the admiring
introduction he wrote to the pro-Aryan writer Houston
Stewart Chamberlain’s book, The Foundations of the
Nineteenth Century, can most kindly be described
as an unwise hostage to fortune, not least as many
years later it enabled Hitler to tell the two Mitford
girls what an honour it was to be visiting the graveof Wagner with the grand-daughters of the great
Lord Redesdale. He later retracted his admiration for
Chamberlain. But the episode was typical of Mitford’s
impetuous inconsistency where other writers would
have proceeded with greater care.
Robert Morton handles all these difficult areas
with good sense. He also writes fluently and accessibly:
this is a book which can be read without a detailed
knowledge of the complex politics of Japan as it began
to open up to the outside the world in the 1860s.
He tells Mitford’s story with a sense of proportion.
Mitford was not a profound analyst of the dramaticdevelopments through which he lived. But he was a
sympathetic observer of Japan, and his affection for it
helped to build greater knowledge of Japan among
British people and a deeper understanding of thecountry. And his official and personal papers give us
a lively impression of a historical moment of greatsignificance. Robert Morton’s biography is a fitting
memorial.§

Consul in Japan, 1903-1941.
Oswald White’s Memoir ‘All
Ambition Spent’

Oswald White first went to Japan in 1903 asa ‘student interpreter’ in the British Japan ConsularService. In Japan he served in Tokyo, Yokohama,Nagasaki and Osaka. He had two stints in Korea. His
final postings were as Consul-General in Mukden
and at Tientsin ending in 1941. From these posts
he observed the evolution of Japanese foreign andeconomic policy.
Those of us who have experienced the postwar
scene in Japan and have studied Japanese in different
circumstances may be amused by some of hiscomments on language study, the work of consular
officers in his era and their role in relation to trade.
His final chapter on Anglo-Japanese relations,which was written in 1941 while he was on leave inedited by Hugo Read
Renaissance Books (2017)
ISBN-13: 978-1898823643
Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi
Readers should not be put off by the tittle of this book.
‘All ambition spent’ suggests a disappointed man anda dull life in a far off corner of the globe. In fact thebook contains much of interest to the historian and toanyone concerned with the international relations ofJapan in the first half of the twentieth century.
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

3

Canada, is well worth reading carefully. It contains
many points, which are still relevant today.
He had retained his liking for Japanese people,
but had no illusions about Japanese motives andbehavior in East Asia. He noted that ‘Japan nevershowed any particular consideration for British
interests. It was significant that wherever she gained
control, British trade faded out of the picture’. (p. 200)
The Japanese were, he thought, ‘very self-centered’and ‘do not readily see the other man’s point of view’.
‘When the time comes that another nation blocks
what he considers his natural expansion then to him itis the other nation that is the aggressor!’
He is, however, just as scathing about British
policies in the Far East. In the decade from 1930 to 1940
Great Britain had fallen between two stools. ‘Its tactics
were either too strong or not strong enough. It scolded
Japan in season and out of season for its doings in
China but it merely succeeded in infuriating her’.
White drew attention to Austen Chamberlain’scomment that the British ‘decide the practicalquestions of daily life by instinct rather than by any
careful process of reasoning’. He thought that the
British tendency to inspiration at the critical moment
had been ‘apt to result in British officials at different
posts pulling in different ways. .. with disastrous
results’. Here he was no doubt thinking of the open

disagreements in the 1930s between the British
missions in Peking and Tokyo.
In a swipe at appeasement he declared that ‘Our
old doctrine of the balance of power, our opportunism,
our tendency to range ourselves in recent years
on the side of lost causes and then watch them gounder all give the impression to outsiders that weare unprincipled’. This approach and our attempts atplaying one country off against another had led, hefelt, to Britain being seen as ‘old and cunning’ (in otherwords as ‘perfidious Albion’).
He was critical too about the lack of foresight in
the formulation of British policy towards Japan. He
noted that in our desire to maintain our establishedrights, we had ‘no definite plans, no strategy and, asa result, the tactics we have devised at the eleventhhour have not been wisely chosen’. In his view ‘wecarried on as though we were still living in the goodold days when a protest backed with a threat of action
could carry the day’. But we had neither the will nor
the means to take effective action. Our threats wereseen as empty and as ’we climbed down all along theline’ our bluff was called.
His conclusion that there was ‘some truth in thecriticism that we never forget and we never learn’ sadly
resonates today. §Hidden by the Leaves

historical theatre that S.D.L. Curry’s Hidden by the
Leaves is set.
Book one of the author’s new ‘Hidden Trilogy’, thestory pursues Catholic Father Joaquim Martinez andhis two junior clergy who have defied the Shogun’s
banishment laws and remained in Japan at great risk
to help their oppressed Christian converts and thecommunity to which they belong. What ensues isa remarkable yet brutal story of good vs evil, tracing
the persecution of Catholic communities from theprovincial towns of Kyushu to the trading ports ofOsaka and Nagasaki and finally the Imperial majesty of
Edo at the peak of Tokugawa rule.
The prose is vivid and illustrative in its depth ofdescription, creating a pictorial sense of medieval Japanin both its beauty and its unbelievable brutality. This isclearly the work of a passionate and exceptionally wellinformed historian who can at times draw the reader so
far into the descriptions of torture and mutilation thatthe pages become uncomfortable to read. S.D.L. Curry’s
writing imparts the sense of desperation and fear that

by S.D.L. Curry
Book Guild Publishing Ltd ( 2016)
ISBN-13: 978-1911320173
Review by Harry Martin
Japan in the early 17th century can be seen on a parwith modern day North Korea in terms of its selfimposed isolation, trade restrictions and politicalparanoia. The Shogun of the time, Tokugawa Iemitsu,
had revoked previous policies on international tradeand movement of foreign nationals, enforcing in placestrict commercial regulations and outright banishmentof foreigners outside the specified trading ports inSouthern Japan.
This period of national isolation, or sakoku inJapanese, coincided with the ongoing expansion of
Christian missions within Japan’s borders, a movement
which was aggressively and brutally suppressed at thetime, resulting in mass persecution and the creation ofa clandestine religious community. It is in this dramatic
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Issue 70, Volume 12, Number 4 (August 2017)

the characters, and their historical counterparts, musthave felt during this tumultuous time.
However, despite the factual historical context,
this is very much a work of fiction with the writer’s
empathy felt throughout. The theme of good vs evil
is, at times, almost comically strong, with the evervirtuous Catholic Father and his flock fighting against
the injustice of the nefarious shogun and his villainous
regime. For me, this provoked the desire to consider
the other point of view – that of an island nation
fiercely protecting its borders from foreign invasion

and fighting for the preservation of its own endemic
culture. This might also be an interesting alternative
perspective to explore.
All in all this is an exciting, if bloodthirsty, workof fiction which explores a less romantic and gentle
period of Japanese history. The universal theme ofgood vs evil brings warmly to light the resilience andbravery that can be found in times of desperation, andthe historical context might inspire some readers todelve further into the background of Japan’s relations
with the wider world.§

Slow Boat

does not translate to a ticket out of Tokyo. The café isdestroyed in a freak accident and the knife girl winsa place at an American university and he lets her go,
resigning himself to a lifetime trapped in Tokyo. Thus,
Furukawa’s protagonist has three chances to escapehis hometown, and fails every time.
The saving grace of Slow Boat is Furukawa’s
ability to make the relatively dislikeable narrator seem
simultaneously accessible and eccentric, giving thereader insights into his most fleeting and profoundthoughts. At regular intervals, we are returned to hisrecurring dream, featuring the CD On a Slow Boat toChina, which is also the name of one of Murakami
Haruki’s short stories, by which the book’s title wasinspired. Although unable to find a way out of thecity, our protagonist does find some respite fromreality in his dreams. The text is also interspersed withshort stories by the narrator’s friend, Nohara Kaku,
seemingly filling the void formed when he cannot
find any words himself.
Although the novella is at times melancholy
and perhaps laboriously introspective, Furukawa
prevents it from becoming overly dark by injectingsome sporadic humour, for example with thenarrator’s obsession with his first girlfriend’s ‘boobs’
and the unfortunate misnaming of his café, which
was intended to be called The Power of Hate. The
colloquial style of his prose also gives the story alighter feel, making it easy to dip in and out of.
As in his recent Horses, Horses, in the End theLight Remains Pure, Furukawa is therefore able to
make a reflective, potentially heavy-going story not
only readable but very enjoyable. However, Slow Boat
offers much more than a quick Saturday afternoon
read. The protagonist’s desperate attempts to leave
Tokyo, and eventual realisation that he will live anddie there, as it houses ‘the roots of my soul’, leaves thereader wondering what exactly the city represents. Is

by Furukawa Hideotranslated by David Boyd
Pushkin Press (2017)
ISBN-13: 978-1782273288
Review by Alice French‘This is my botched Tokyo Exodus, the chronicle of myfailures’ begins the anonymous narrator of Furukawa
Hideo’s latest novella, Slow Boat. The story is a selfreflective, at times self-loathing, journey through theprotagonist’s experiences of Tokyo, and the three
girlfriends that characterise this journey. As is typical of
Furukawa, the story straddles the real and the imagined,
dipping in and out of the narrator’s memories, musingsand dreams to create magical realism that would not
be out of place in a Murakami novel.
Slow Boat takes a diary-like form, and is divided
into nine different sections (boats) of our narrator’s‘Tokyo Exodus’. We start with his school days, andthe struggles he faces as a ‘dropout’ at an ‘alternative
school’. Unable to find friends, he unexpectedly clicks
with a talkative girl in the grade above him and she
becomes his first girlfriend. Alas, the relationship is not
to last, and the girl returns home after the summer;
our protagonist loses touch with her as soon as she
crosses the border of Tokyo into Yamanashi Prefecture.
Our damned hero’s second sexually charged teenage
romance is no more successful; he narrowly misses theopportunity to escape to Miyakojima with his girlfriend
in an adrenaline-fuelled race against time that ends
with a violent train brawl. Following this low point,
things seem to be looking up. The narrator becomesthe proud owner of The Power of Kate, a trendy Tokyo
café tipped for great things, and soon falls in lovewith the young “knife girl” who works in the kitchen.
This relationship is yet again not to be, however, andLatest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

5

it self-identity? Japanese society? Perhaps it is evena metaphor for Furukawa’s battle with writing itself;
the narrator repeatedly complains about language,
claiming that ‘the Japanese language is nothing but

lies’. Whether you get on with the erratic and ill-fatedprotagonist or not, therefore, Slow Boat is bound toleave you engrossed in self-questioning. Kobayashi
Hideo would be proud.§Nodethe relationship with the shutai – the subject. They are
exemplified in the work of Sato Makoto and Ogawa
Pro. As it transpired in the recorded interview with thedirector shown immediately after the screening (1), thiswas the origin of the title ‘node’, in its geometrical senseof an intersection,. Koike is objectifying the intersectionof the subject and filmmaker.
But there are other nodes. It becomes apparent
by the second scene that, as in traditional Japanesevillages generally, there are frequent intersections
between the living and the dead. And in this current
era, there are intersections between the chronicallydepleted population of the village and those whose
livelihood has taken them away from the village but
still have connections to it. On returning from a shrine,
one neighbour reports to another on an extended
burglary of a home that had gone unnoticed.
The reasons hereabouts for depopulation areconnected to forestry – the initial impetus for Koike’s
investigation of the village. Forest monocultures
project their one moment of harvesting into the future,with little in the way of interim labours or reward. A
couple report that the price for their 20,000 trees
isn’t worth the felling. That speaks of our global value
placed on environmental resource. With no history ofmonetary income, old people there have missed on
pension entitlement.
Koike’s reticence was taken to its most patient
extreme in the takes with a single old man who
recounts his war experience, interspersed with remarks
about the dos and don’ts of fishing. He recounts that

directed by Koike Atsushi
Review by Roger Macy
In early 2017, the Japan Society in London put on
three evenings of screenings of films with the Royal
Anthropological Institute, curated there by George
Barker. Sandwiched between the screenings of Kim
Longinotto’s Gaea Girls and two documentaries related
to the Ainu people in Japan was Koike Atsushi’s Node,a careful, Japanese-made study of a community, which
has had no other screening outside of the University ofTromsø, for whom it was made.
Node – there is only an English title, relies entirelyon the Japanese dialogue of its subjects. The English
subtitles provided were more than an aid, as muchbetter speakers than I were unable to grasp all of thedialect. It’s a study of the residents of a depopulated
village, Hirogawara, in forested hills northwest of
Kyoto.

Image from Node

The film starts as it means to go on. After a brieflandscape shot, the camera is waiting patiently in an
old woman’s kitchen. She will speak when she’s ready,after she has got us our cup of tea, and begins to tell
us how her 70 years of service at the temple started, on
the say-so of her brother-in-law. There is no sense of
the filmmaker pressing questions; but he isn’t entirely
inaudible – sometimes the unseen Koike will answer
interviewees’ questions and let them continue.
That style of patient sympathy with the subject soon
told me that Koike was immersed in styles and theories
of Japanese documentary-making that foreground
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Image from Node
Issue 70, Volume 12, Number 4 (August 2017)

killing the enemy used to seem normal, that he evenboasted of it. Without a break, those running away fromhim have become ‘farmers’. They leave a baby in theirhouse, which he feeds. A long pause is uncut and we’reback to fishing. I couldn’t have resisted asking more.
A 100-day death commemoration contrasts
strongly with the interviews. The returned emigrants
speak in a more recognisable Japanese, formal for theoccasion. The son of the deceased, the new family
head, welcomes and thanks the guests. A ceremony
is chanted; to which family members rotate a circularrope from hand. I suppose each family member,resident or non-resident, is a node on this circle. Withno cuts in the filming, we see a small boy evolve fromamused fascination, to sleepiness, and to sleep itself,
at which point he is silently carried away to the next
room by the new, and modern, family head.

We simply close with a few more fishing tips.
But between each scene are punctuation shots. Some
depict local scenery but many depict an equally patient
toad, who finally catches his meal.
The film to me seemed eminently a calling-cardfor Yamagata, the biennial documentary film festivalthat arose out of the original Ogawa Pro. But it wasnever accepted there. So it remains in the memory
purely of the Japan Society and callers by appointment
at the Royal Anthropological Institute.§

In this Corner of the World

perspective. This approach is at times disorientating,but as the events of the film unfold, this familiarity with
Suzu’s outlook lends real pathos.
Aside from the absorbing and emotionallyaffecting narrative, this is a film of breathtaking
beauty, the sketchy, hand-drawn style reminiscent of
My Neighbors the Yamadas and Princess Kaguya. As
in the latter, there is a spirit of experimentation to theanimation and during what is perhaps the film’s mostharrowing scene, the animation degrades to a scrawl
and colour is stripped away entirely.
While constant air raids, food rationing andcrippling inflation are reminders of the film’s context,
the majority of the scenes are comfortingly banal
episodes of Suzu’s daily life, as she negotiates the
dynamic of her husband’s family and embraces her
new role as housewife. This is a remarkably humanstory and the mechanics of war are kept very much tothe background.§directed by Katabuchi Sunao
Released 28 June 2017
Review by Poppy Cosyns
72 years after US airforces dropped The Little Boy
nuclear bomb, former Ghibli employee Katabuchi
Sunao explores this devastating historical event
through a wonderfully vivid new story. In This Cornerof the World – adapted from Kono Fumiyo’s manga– follows the life of Suzu, a hopelessly dreamy young
woman more focused on her sketchbook than the
spectre of war that looms over her home city –Hiroshima.
The start of the film follows Suzu from childhood
through to her marriage to port clerk Shushaku, an
event which forces her to leave her tight-knit family andrelocate to the neighbouring city of Kure. Katabuchi
presents the film in a dream-like, painterly haze,
forcing the audience to engage with Suzu’s distracted

Japanese Taiko
performed by Joji Hirota & The
London Taiko Drummers
ARC Music
Release 28 April 2017
Review by Laurence Green‘As in many other cultures, Japanese drums wereused to communicate the people’s pleas to the gods,
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

Notes(1) With thanks to Akiho Horton, who recorded aninterview with Koike-san in Japan that was shown after
the screening.

or in reverse, help people understand the will of thegods, and were considered invaluable instruments ineveryday life.‘
Joji Hirota’s words set the scene for a world
caught between two divides – people and gods, thesacred and the everyday, old and new. It is a world
defined by this intoxicating mix, a soundscape forwhich this – his third album of taiko music – becomesa kind of experimental playground for exploring the7

range and flexibility of the instrument. Blending
the essence of tradition with the inherent power of
the taiko as a ‘performance art’, this CD serves as an
excellent introduction to both the skill of Hirota andhis players as musicians, but also a striking reminder ofthe warmth and richness of sound that can come fromthe taiko as an instrument.
For the uninitiated, the word ‘taiko’ is the Japanesefor ‘big, fat drums’ – but they can in fact come in all
shapes and sizes, from a modest 15cm diameter rightup to a jaw-droppingly immense 140cm. Taiko music isrooted in the deep tradition of Kabuki and Noh theatre,
as well as Buddhist and Shinto beliefs, and while thissense of taiko as a kind of ‘folk music’ persists, it has
seen a surge of popularity in recent years as a dramatic,
exciting performance art.
Musicians like Hirota have been at the forefrontof this revolution, reinvigorating the instrument’s
repertoire as part of concerted push abroad –introducing the taiko to a new, younger generation
around the world. Enter the London Taiko Drummers– who accompany Hirota on this disc, and have been
performing alongside him for over six years now.
Indeed, for Hirota, this collaborative aspect is in many
ways a key motivator behind the release of this CD,
which he sees not only as a way of preserving their
hard work, study and practice for posterity, but also as
a stepping stone to even greater levels of skill in the
future.
Going by the music displayed here, the years of
discipline have definitely paid off. Hirota and his team
capture a real depth of sound that, for all its natural
percussiveness, never feels like it’s pounding its way
into your head. Rather, the passion and energy of theplayers flows out across twelve individual pieces thatcome together to paint a complete picture – chaptersin story that slowly unfurls the more you listen. One of
the wonders of taiko music is that it operates on many
distinct levels, offering hidden depths as you unpick
the various elements that make up the ‘wholeness’ of
the finished sound.
Much of the CD is rooted in the raw, elemental
feel of nature, with tracks like ‘Haru no Ibuki’ (Spring

Breeze) and ‘Chikyu’ (The Earth) surging with a powerfulenergy that really captures the sheer essence of natural
life in its purest form. Hirota’s music has frequently
featured in film and TV – including the Wildlife Survival
documentary series as well as Martin Scorsese’s recent
film ‘Silence’ – and the cinematic, widescreen feel ofmany of the tracks here is plain to see. Much like a
director will carefully select and frame shots to best
capture a feeling or emotion in a scene, so too does
the pulse and flow of the taiko music here; one minutefast, another slow, all contributing to a highly organic
feel that echoes the rhythms of the human body itself.
We are treated to a widening of the musicalpalette in ‘Kokiriko’, a charming harvest song from
Ishikawa, Toyama prefecture, that slows the pacedown to a rhythmic to-and-fro chant, accompanied
by an elegant refrain played on the shakuhachi flute.
Once again, the feelings of nature remain very muchat the fore – a nostalgic feel of the passing seasons
allowing a moment for pause and reflection amidst
the more frenetic material elsewhere on the CD.
Special mention has to go to the accompanying
booklet too, which serves as an excellent primer forthe music; including an introduction from Hirota
himself, biographies for all the players, translationsof the track titles and lyrics, as well as an overview ofother taiko and Japanese folk music releases from label
ARC Music. The result is a package that, much like themusic itself, is full-bodied and deep in flavour – onethat rewards repeat listening and an appreciation for
the finer details.
Throughout, the skill of both Hirota and The
London Taiko Drummers is on ample display – forthose new to taiko drumming, this CD makes for an
excellent introduction, and for those more familiar
with the instrument, the flexibility and richness ofthe material is sure to offer particular delight. Hirota’s
personal manifesto centres around creating taiko musicin a new contemporary style that also maintains thegrace and high energy of the instrument’s traditional
heritage, and based on the evidence here, we couldn’t
agree more with his approach.§Interested in writing for The Japan Society Review?

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about your knowledge of and interest in Japan.