Tag Archives: Doll Festival

Tokyo, Japan: Traditional Music in Mejiro

TOKYO CITY GUIDE : CULTURE / MUSIC

Toyo-Japan-Traditional Music in Mejiro-2-Photo Mademoiselle Le K-copyright 2014

Lost in the Mejiro small streets

where live aristocrates, I hear the sound. Through a narrow window, the frame of a distant green kimono surrounded by red, amphitheater. Shyly we get in, I take my shoes off to surf to a bunch, the hall is almost empty.

Few scattered people looking at the stage. We are watching a Hogaku concert rehearsal, the Japanese traditional music, Edo music. The exciting meeting with percussionists musicians and the green kimono actress. Picture below: the Uchiwa-ame plays the rain sound.

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Harumi Mochizuki, the excellent Hayashi player (Japanese traditional drums) cames from an artist family: a percussionist mother and a singer father. She played around the world.

On the picture below, a Kotsuzumi on the Harumi‘s shoulder. Kotsuzumi is a small drum shaped like an hourglass and used in Nô theater

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Katada Kisayo, the gifted percussionist, is gratued of Tokyo University in Music, like all the musicians of Ayairobako (the band presented in this post). No “great sound” without “guitare hero”: on picture 5, two Shamisen players.

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Picture above: a traditional gift for Hina Matsuri, the Doll Festival or Girls’ Day (picture above). Mayuko Nakamura is the beautiful actress in the green kimono who declaims on music (picture below).

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Photos : Mademoiselle Le K – copyright 2014, tous droits réservés. 

Domo arigato gosaimasu to the Ayairobako band and my tomodachi N for the great translation! 

Informations

How to go to Mejiro by metroMejiro is a district in Tokyo.

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Tokyo, Japan: A walk and coffee in Omotesando and Aoyama  

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