Taiko Drumming and the Buraku Community in Osaka, Japan
The Kizuna Ensemble, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, 2022
Photo Credit: Photo by Terada Yoshitaka.
By Terada Yoshitaka, Professor Emeritus, National Museum of Ethnology, Japan
Taiko is a style of ensemble drumming which began in the 1950s in post-war Japan. Since then, it has developed into an exponentially popular genre of performing arts, and literally thousands of groups are actively engaged in performance today. Professional groups have emerged and some are internationally acclaimed, but they represent a tiny fraction of taiko culture in Japan, in which the vast majority of players remain non-professional. Their deep involvement derives primarily from personal satisfaction based on the physicality of taiko playing and a joy of making powerful music together.
Yet, there exist a small number of taiko groups whose activities are geared toward specific social objectives. About a dozen groups in Osaka in western Japan are based in a marginalized community known as Buraku. The people of this community are presumably the descendants of those who were engaged in work considered ritually defiling and placed at the bottom of the social hierarchy in the pre-modern period. They were previously referred to with blatantly derogatory names such as eta (‘extreme filth’) and hinin (‘non-human’). Discrimination against the Buraku people continues today, especially in the areas of marriage and employment, despite the persistent anti-discrimination efforts, most prominently by the Buraku Liberation League (BLL).
One of the Buraku’s hereditary professions is related to the handling of animal hides, including taiko making. Due to the perceived impurity of handling hides, the taiko makers have been subject to discrimination and prejudice despite their significant contribution to Japanese culture and society. While taiko as an art form has attained a celebrated status in mainstream Japanese culture, the makers of taiko as an instrument continue to experience discrimination. It is a perception of this contradiction which led to the establishment of a taiko group, Ikari (meaning “anger”), in 1987 in the Naniwa section of Osaka city, where taiko making has a 300-year history.
The group wanted to draw attention to the taiko makers’ neglected contributions by playing taiko with extraordinary skills and vigor. The fierce nature of their performance, especially in its formative years, was a hallmark of Ikari, with an unmistakable representation of anger on stage, in which the players often glared at the audience. They quickly became well-known in the Buraku community and were invited to many gatherings and events that aimed to fight against discrimination and promoted human rights.
Inspired by Ikari’s success, taiko groups were formed in many other Buraku communities in Osaka. Many children were attracted to taiko simply because it was a fun and safe activity with their friends from the same community, but they gradually gained a better understanding of the harsh discrimination of the past from the community reaction to their performance. As such, taiko functions as a venue for inter-generational communication within Buraku communities. The victims of trauma do not always tell their experiences to their children. While the children of the Buraku community study the history of the community in after-school classes run by the BLL, it is often the elders’ comments and reaction to their performances which lead to more visceral and empathetic understanding of the past experiences of the community.
Eventually, an idea emerged to form a pan-Buraku taiko group to further their objectives for social change, and six groups joined forces to launch Kizuna (meaning “bond” or “connection”) in 2014. Importantly, Kizuna’s orientation shifted from the previous anger-based performance to a more inclusive and joyous one. Humor has been added to the Kizuna performances and the joy of playing taiko is expressed abundantly in their body language.
Another important shift can be seen in the group’s membership. The public performances of Buraku groups inspire many non-Buraku children from the neighboring area to learn taiko. While they join the taiko group with virtually no knowledge about the Buraku history and the group’s overall objectives, they also gradually recognize the importance of the group’s activities and some even become prominent members of the group.
As Tanimoto Naoya, leader of Kizuna, acknowledges, it is a courageous and risky affiliation for those non-Buraku members, considering that many Buraku people themselves remain silent about their background even to their friends and colleagues, for fear of discrimination. The leaders of Kizuna came to believe that it is more effective to promote human rights awareness when Buraku and non-Buraku members share the stage. Importantly, this shift reflects, and reinforces, the transformation of the BLL’s overall strategy from confrontational condemnation of the discriminatory offence to a regional community-building involving both Buraku and neighboring non-Buraku residents.
The group made its first international tour in 2015 when they were invited to the 11th UK Taiko Festival. Their extraordinary performance and the story behind their activities left a profound impact on the audience, as one participant described it as “They played it as if their lives depended on it!” (Kirby 2018: 270). In turn, through such exposure to the audiences abroad, the Buraku taiko players in Osaka became increasingly aware of the global context in which taiko is performed and appreciated today and began to see new possibilities for future activities.
Taiko has become a proud cultural resource to inspire, create a sense of unity for, and maintain historical memory of, the Buraku community in Osaka. It proves an effective means to interact with non-Buraku neighbors, and with the formation of Kizuna, it has become the symbol of the Buraku community at large in the Osaka area. As many in the Buraku community have observed, taiko has the potential to develop a performance-based model of community-building as it lowers the hurdle for cross-community as well as inter-generational communication.
Reference
Kirby, Jonathan. 2018. The Way of the Drum: Taiko without Borders. Exeter, UK: Kagemusha Taiko Company.
Note
The film, Angry Drummers: A Taiko Group from Osaka, Japan (85 minutes, 2011, with English subtitles) can be rented free of charge from the National Museum of Ethnology for research and educational purposes. Contact the Information Section for inquiry (mmds@minpaku.ac.jp).