Traditional Japanese Culture Class

One of the courses I took at Keio this past semester was called Traditional Japanese Culture. The first part, as I've already mentioned was tea ceremony.
The second part was about traditional Japanese instruments, and the class was taught about the history of the instruments and was given the opportunity to hear some actual performances and touch the actual instruments ourselves.

The first instrument we learned about was a string instrument called the Heike Biwa.
The biwa was played traditionally by blind monks to earn a living. The monk would play on the biwa for emphasis and tell a story through his song. Because these monks were blind, the music was passed on by ear, although the stories were written down. In this class, we also learned about traditional Japanese culture and how it was expressed through biwa music. Interestingly, to do this, the teacher showed us the end of the Hollywood movie 'The Last Samurai' where Watanabe Ken is dying and saying how all the cherry blossoms are perfect. And the teacher pretty much said yes, this dying warrior is what Japanese consider a hero; this is a perfect example of Japanese culture. An American movie being exemplified as an example of Japanese culture. Wow. Those were my thoughts.

One of the interesting things that I found about the biwa class was that the teacher wore a Japanese priest robe that had a transparent layer on top that looked very light and green. The teacher said that the robe the biwa player wore was very important. In consideration for his audience, the biwa player would wear something that looked cool and refreshing on a hot day in order to make his audience feel cool. Japanese really are considerate about the person they face.

I recorded a music sample from class, but I seem to have lost it, so I've found a clip from Youtube of a biwa player in order to get a feel of what the tune and song sound like.

The next instrument that we learned about was the shamisen.
Me and Hinata loved the teacher because he was kind of young and talked really casually with us, which was unusual for a teacher to do. The best part of the shamisen class was the performance on the second day. The teacher and this other guy who he plays with put on a whole show for us. They are actually a street performer band called Seshami Street, and they're so funny.

Again, I lost my audio clip of them, but I was able to find a video of them on Youtube from 3 years ago. This is pretty much how they performed for us, too. They apparently come to Washington D.C.'s Cherry blossom festival in the spring sometimes, so I hope to see them again sometime! 

The final instrument was koto. The teacher was such an airhead, but she was so cute.
I did a project on koto a few years ago, so I'm pretty familiar with this instrument, but it was cool seeing it performed in Japan. Apparently, there are even koto specialty colleges in Japan, which shows the importance that Japan puts on this traditional instrument even today.

I found the sound clip that I recorded for the koto, so here it is! (Press the small square play button to the direct left of the black MusicUploader banner below to play)



This class was very interesting and a nice break from graded work. There were no tests on the history or anything. There was just a short essay due at the end with the impressions of the class. It was more informative than anything. It was truly a privilege to have these musicians explain their backgrounds and perform in front of us, so this was definitely a class that I enjoyed!