Interview conducted with Handuo Sun, Interpreted by Dance Department Chair Joe Small ’05 with assistance from Reishiro Kawakami ’26
Eitetsu Hayashi is a pioneering taiko artist renowned for revolutionizing the traditional art form of taiko and bringing Japanese drumming to a global platform.
Shinz Jo Ooi: Thank you so much for having this interview with us, we’re honored to have you. I wanted to start by asking what you think the importance of taiko is today.
Eitetsu Hayashi: Speaking in broad terms, when it comes to taiko in the here and now, we need to keep finding and making what it is fresh and new. The other basic point is that, essentially, with the way taiko is as a contemporary form, in its newness, having people playing together in larger numbers with drums creates that massive quality of sound that can basically out-compete amplified performances, and even be something louder than a rock band or a concert.
Going into more detail around this, it’s important to keep the distinction between taiko in the past and present. Taiko in the present day isn’t folk drumming, which exists in its own way in Japan, in different communities. For instance, where people are doing folk art with taiko drums, it has gone back for centuries, so you can call it a tradition per se. What we’re doing in the here and now has lines that connect to tradition, and can express aspects of that or take inspiration from that. But what’s important is that it needs to be something different. It needs to evolve and change to represent what is going on now in the present day. One of the other ways it has changed is the fact that it’s being played by large numbers of people with large drums, which is not a traditional thing. In fact, I have been responsible for creating this new form of playing taiko and helping it evolve.
SJO: What keeps you motivated to keep making art as a taiko performer?
EH: It’s actually kind of mysterious how this happened. Going back to 53 years ago [since 1971], I didn’t have the mindset of doing this for a long time, but I just got wrapped up in it. As years go by and you get a little older, before you know it, suddenly, over 50 years have gone by.
When I was first with a group based in Japan in the early 1970s, we were making this art form happen, which didn’t exist before. It was a giant struggle, and we didn’t quite know what we were doing yet. I didn’t exactly have the motivation to keep going and initially wasn’t so inspired. But then we had the opportunity to perform overseas, and we thought “How is this going to be received?” since what we were doing was a heavily modified and arranged performance of traditional folk drumming in Japan. So, it was really surprising to see that American and international audiences were incredibly stunned and had massive reactions to our performances.
For instance, on Broadway during the ’70s, there were kabuki performances, which was traditional Japanese theater. The audience’s response would have been somewhat pleasant, but muted, like “Oh yes, this is nice enough.” So, we weren’t expecting our folk drumming to make the impact that it did since it was coming out of Japanese roots. Having such big responses led to more opportunities, be it collaborating with Western orchestras or playing in prominent concerts around the world. As a result, I felt the inspiration and motivation to keep going further, because I was already so invested in it.
Handuo Sun: Thank you so much for that. Taking up the point of taiko going to an international stage, in what ways do you think the popularity of taiko in Western countries addresses the issues around cultural appropriation and the misinterpretation of East Asian, namely Japanese, cultures?
EH: Speaking from my Japanese perspective, for the younger generation of Japanese people, aspects of traditional Japanese culture or those indicative of Japanese tradition, such as cultural practices or arts, are not always looked at in an appealing or cool way. More often, people are going to be very interested in Western culture. This goes back to the pre-war period, with the Westernization in Japan during the Meiji period, and the post-war period in the ’50s, during which there was an influx of American and Western culture and ideals. That still persists today. For example, Taylor Swift did a week of sold-out shows in Japan in a stadium that seats 50,000 people. Bruno Mars also came, and actually, I went too. That sort of dichotomy exists, and I’m finding that performing arts rooted in traditional culture may not be the most attractive option they could pick or divert their attention to.
Thus, I feel as though taiko has blown open a hole that wind can pass through, which I played a role in doing in the early ’70s. By performing taiko overseas, this may have hopefully inspired other East Asian cultures to find new ways of exploring, evolving, and performing their traditional arts. With taiko being the proof that it’s possible for minority cultures to be internationally present, this is like a driving force to help inspire and encourage a lot of minority cultures to go abroad and mark their presence too.
While taiko did exist in Japanese American communities back then, it might have been typically played for their own events and festivals. Hence, the group I was in and the art that I was making, had a way of transcending or getting over the walls that had been in place about racial identity or ethnicity. Back then, you would often see a predominantly African American crowd if there was an African American artist, which might be the same for Caucasian or East Asian artists. But I remember before our performance in Los Angeles in the ’70s, we peeked out behind the audience and noticed everybody had different types of hair. We were told that it was very unusual in the United States to see people from different cultural backgrounds and identities coming together to watch Japanese taiko drumming. I think the fact that this form reached so many people was essentially also a way of overcoming and combating stereotypes.
SJO: When you were describing how people of different ethnicities came to see the show, I thought about how you mentioned in one of your talks that all humans can somewhat relate to taiko because of its resemblance to a heartbeat and collective memories from the womb. I was wondering if you could elaborate more on that. Additionally, why do you think music is so important to humans, why do we make music?
EH: I’ve toured nearly 50 countries at this point, and I’ve performed for so many people of different cultural identities and backgrounds around the world. The common factor I found in these performances is that there will be people in the audience who will be moved to tears. I wasn’t quite sure why this was the case, but then I read how a Japanese scientist had looked at the waveforms of various things, including Japanese taiko drums and the human heartbeat. That led me to think that we were all in our mother’s stomach at one point, and all we could hear was essentially the sound of our mother’s heartbeat. But, we’re surrounded in embryonic fluid, so we’re not exactly hearing it, but instead feeling it, like how a taiko drum can generate so many sound waves that you could feel it as much as you hear it. So, I began to think perhaps people cried because something is left over from this time of being inside our mothers, and that feeling can be so incredibly nostalgic that it moves you to tears.
I was also wondering why taiko is so healing and attractive. I was reading how a neuroscientist was looking at sound frequencies, and he concluded that below 99 hertz, people of varying cultures, backgrounds, and identities just don’t associate it with anything, but they can all respond to it. However, when the sound goes into 100 hertz, the subjects’ brain activity changes depending on their cultural backgrounds and identities and they form different associations about that sound.
But below that mark, roughly speaking, their brains responded in more or less the same way. So there’s a commonality with taiko in terms of the sound frequencies. I play a very big drum called an Odaiko, which is known for its low frequencies, and it seems like therefore maybe people all respond and feel taiko in very, very similar ways. And in that regard, maybe I have that to thank too, for having this job of playing taiko around the world.
HS: That sounds really interesting, thank you so much. One last question I have is about how improvisation is typically seen as an important role in taiko. How is that reflected in your solo performances: how much of the performance is pre-planned, and how much of it is left to the moment?
EH: You can split my career into two large areas. In the first ten or eleven years, I was part of a group that I helped found and develop. At that point, there wasn’t much improvisation going on and everything was pretty much committed down. We played pieces that were pre-composed or arranged. When I became a solo artist in 1982, I was able to branch out more and get involved with other artists, including jazz artists, so I went more into this notion of improvising with taiko. I still compose, of course. When I’m with my ensemble now, depending on the piece, it could be completely written down and composed, which we all would rehearse. At other times, if it’s just me, I can choose to follow a structure or keep it completely free.
There’s another semi-improvised way of doing things. If it’s a long piece, or like a suite, there are parts that are completely composed along the way, as well as spots that open up for people to improvise and ad-lib.
HS: Thank you for the great interview. This has been exciting and helpful, and we’re really excited to come to the concert tomorrow.
