One hundred fifty years ago, the long-isolated nation of Japan signed a friendship treaty with the United States–as U.S. warships under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry sailed near Japan’s shore.
Ever since, the opening of Japan to the West has been fodder for various cultural examinations, from Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant 1976 musical, “Pacific Overtures” to last year’s Tom Cruise film “The Last Samurai.”
On Monday night, two remarkable musicians marked the sesquicentennial of U.S.-Japanese relations with a haunting performance in the Claudia Cassidy Theater of the Chicago Cultural Center.
Organized by the Japan American Society of Chicago, the event featured East Current, a Japanese duo in the midst of a rare U.S. tour. Better still, the two musicians of East Current used folkloric instruments infrequently heard in mainstream American settings.
Dozan Fujiwara and Mieko Miyazaki are acknowledged in Japan as young masters of their instruments, and it was obvious from the first notes of the concert that they deserve every whit of acclaim they have achieved.
Fujiwara coaxes ethereal, seemingly other-worldly tones from the shakuhachi, a bamboo instrument vaguely resembling a recorder or wooden flute. But the extraordinarily subtle sounds that Fujiwara can produce on an instrument of such modest design, from bent pitches that defy traditional Western scales to gentle tones rivaling the expressiveness of the human voice, transcend listener expectations.
Miyazaki is at least as dexterous on koto, a plucked-string instrument that, on this occasion, at least, played mostly an accompanying role.
“These instruments are very simple,” Miyazaki told the audience, between selections.
But what alluring timbres and sophisticated ideas these players articulated with these ostensibly rudimentary tools.
After Fujiwara opened the evening with a sweetly unaffected solo version of “Amazing Grace,” he teamed with Miyazaki in the delicate tone painting of Tadashi Manjome’s “Ringo-no-Uta.” Penned for the first movie made in Japan after World War II, “Soyokaze,” the piece spoke volumes about the intimate scale, straightforward harmonies and unadorned lyricism of post-WWII Japanese popular music.
Some of the most important musical works of the Japanese canon have come from depictions of nature. East Current underscored the point with the “Spring Sea” of Michio Miyagi, its rippling arpeggios and gently flowing rhythms indeed recalling the sound of water.
In Ryouichi Hattori’s “Tokyo Boogie Woogie,” the duo merged Eastern melody with Western rhythm, a development even Commodore Perry might not have anticipated.
