Toho Koto

The foreign minister of Japan, Yoriku Kawaguchi, gave an award in 2003 to the Washington Toho Koto Society for spreading the knowledge of Japanese music across the United States. Did they deserve it? Did they spread this knowledge to you?

Today, two society members, Kyoko Okamoto and Sachiko Smith (suspicious last name, Smith) played the koto and the shamisen at the Church of the Epiphany. When they started with a 16th century piece which seemed like discordant plings to me and nothing more, I said to myself: this may be two weeks in a row that I cannot sit through the entire hour, but.....

When they moved into the 20th century, things improved. Listening to this music is like looking at a Japanese print, or perhaps like reading a poem. It is not music like melody and harmony and rhythm. It is music like: let's set the mood, and luxuriate in it. Hana Ikeda (also known as flower petals) just brings up the delicate flowers floating down the stream or across the lake. Other offerings showed children at play at the ned of day, and showed autumn closing in.

So much sounds like raindrops, like the fountains in a Japanese garden.

Do Japanese whistle? If so, they don't whistle these songs, but they come out of the concerts as if they were in a transcendental meditation session.

By the way, does anyone know how Japanese music is written? Can't be with clefs, staffs and notes, can it? That would really be coincidenta.