A Taiko Tradition: Bang the Drum Loudly

Thirty years ago, two people fell prey to the lure of the Japanese big drum.

In San Francisco, a martial artist from Japan attending a local cherry blossom festival noted the stark absence of the taiko, the thunderous drum that is a fixture at most every Japanese community celebration.

In Los Angeles, a Japanese American Buddhist priest putting away the temple taiko after an annual Bon Odori summer festival wondered why this glorious instrument should stay shuttered away but for a few nights a year.

Within months of each other, Seiichi Tanaka and the Rev. Mas Kodani had formed taiko performance groups at opposite ends of the state--and pioneered a Japanese American art form that has exploded in popularity today and will be featured at the North American Taiko Conference, which begins today in Little Tokyo.

The conference, which is expected to draw more than 500 taiko drummers, manufacturers and fans from the United States, Canada and Japan, will feature a variety of workshops, demonstrations and discussions. Two concerts will be held Saturday and Sunday at the Japan America Theatre.

“As Japanese Americans, we didn’t have any arts that were passionate and physical,” said Bryan Yamami, a conference organizer with the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center. “We have classical dance and tea ceremony, things that are very precise and proper. But taiko is exciting and dynamic; it’s musical but also visceral.”

Today, the appeal of taiko’s raw power and commanding roar, mesmerizing choreography and colorful costuming has moved far beyond the Japanese American community.

Taiko groups now consist of drummers of all races, who perform at venues from public schools to Carnegie Hall. The distinctive taiko drumbeat is now featured in Hollywood commercials and movie soundtracks, including “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” and “The Thin Red Line.” A plethora of taiko styles now mix dance and theater, salsa and jazz, with the traditional Japanese drum.

The proliferation of taiko groups has even sparked an emerging set of issues that will be addressed at the conference. They include the ethics of imitating styles and songs, whether a formal organization should govern the burgeoning number of groups and how to safeguard the tradition’s Japanese roots as the art moves into the mainstream.

“How do you copyright a particular movement? Is this going to stay a Japanese American cultural thing? These are all questions people need to talk about,” said Johnny Mori, a taiko pioneer who plays for both the jazz group Hiroshima and Kinnara, the group based at Kodani’s Senshin Buddhist Temple.

Shrouded in folklore and myth, taiko is said to have been brought to Japan from China thousands of years ago as a Buddhist ritual tool, an instrument of court music and a means for villagers to communicate with one another. In Japanese folk tradition, Kodani said, taiko also represents regeneration, with the drumsticks as a male symbol and the drum, female.

It was not until the 1950s, however, that taiko began to develop as a performing art in Japan, and then independently in the United States a decade later.

Kodani’s Senshin Buddhist Temple, near USC, was central in popularizing taiko by inventing a way to make drums inexpensively from wine barrels, rather than the traditional method of carving out whole pieces of wood. The innovation allowed groups to make taikos for about $400, rather than the Japanese price of a couple thousand dollars for a small drum to $70,000 for a huge one, Yamami said.

Many Groups, Many Interpretations

For the nearly 100 groups that now flourish in North America, taiko variously represents an art form, a spiritual path, a cultural expression and a political statement.

“Most taiko groups in America are searching for some kind of root in their ancestry,” said Mt. Shasta musician Russell Baba, who, along with his wife, Jeanne Mercer, has played taiko for 27 years and is leading a pilot training program for young drummers this week in Los Angeles.

The development of taiko as a community art paralleled the civil rights movement and the quest for ethnic identity. For many, Mori said, taiko was one way to reembrace a cultural heritage that many cast aside in shame following the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

But Mori and other members of Kinnara (which translates as Buddhist celestial music) see taiko performance primarily as a way to practice Buddhist principles of interdependence, of recognizing the ego and moving beyond it. Kinnara members do not strive for musical perfection; talented showboats are nudged aside in favor of those with fewer skills but greater humility, Kodani said.

“What we play, how we play it, when we play it, is all decided communally,” Kodani said.

Many of the group’s pieces carry Buddhist themes. “Samsara,” which Kinnara will perform this weekend at the Taiko Jam ’99 concerts, expresses the experience of being caught in the world of self-delusion, while “Parpancha” captures the Buddhist view that most of human speech is meaningless.

Similarly, Centenary Methodist Church sees its taiko group as a religious path, with the Bible incorporated in its mission statement and such compositions as “Bringing Down the Walls of Jericho.”

Tanaka, in contrast, developed what he calls “power taiko”--a musical expression of his martial arts combining discipline and strength with the rustic spirit of Japanese village festivals. In an effort to hone his craft, he shuttled back and forth from Japan to study with preeminent groups there, including Osuwa Taiko and O Edo Sukeroku Taiko.

Tanaka’s demanding approach, both controversial and respected, re-creates the feudalistic, hierarchical relationship between master and student that characterizes sumo wrestling, tea ceremony and other Japanese arts. He also requires a rigorous physical regimen of up to four miles of running, 400 push-ups and 400 sit-ups before every practice, and he employs “tough love,” whacking with his hand the students who don’t measure up.

In recent years, however, Tanaka has added meditation and the Chinese art of energy movement known as qigong to his curriculum. He now sees drumming as a path to a healthy life, deriving power from the inner forces rather than raw physical strength. Although his San Francisco Taiko Dojo will not be performing this weekend, Tanaka will be leading two workshops today and Saturday.

“These days I am as soft as tofu, but I still have my spirit behind me,” Tanaka said.

For Generation X-er Ann Ishimaru, taiko has been a way to reconnect with her roots. Raised in white suburban communities around the United States, Ishimaru says she was ashamed of her heritage, proud she could not speak Japanese and pretended she hated sushi.

When she was about 12, she saw her first taiko performance in Seattle and was secretly thrilled that a Japanese American art could be so powerful and compelling--and performed by women as well.

Years later, as a freshman at Stanford University, she signed up for a class that linked the loud, steady sound of the drum and the vocal political movement to gain reparations for the internment of Japanese Americans.

Ishimaru was hooked. She started Stanford Taiko, and is now a founding member of Portland Taiko. The group, which includes members of Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Laotian and European ancestry, is aimed at promoting cultural diversity and social justice, she said.

Still others pursue taiko purely as an end in itself. “I joined because of the art, the music and performing,” said San Jose Taiko member Wisa Umemura.

Despite the deep meaning taiko seems to give many practitioners, however, one of the men who started it all warns against taking it all too seriously.

“It’s just a cow skin sheet over a wine barrel,” Kodani said with a laugh.

* North American Taiko Conference, Japan American Theater, 244 S. San Pedro St., public concerts Saturday, 8 p.m., and Sunday, 3 p.m., $24, (213) 680-3700.