Date: September 25, 1998
Source: San Jose Mercury News "Eye"

S.J. Taiko Celebrates 25th anniversary
Artists from Japan here to collaborate in milestone event.

East is East; West is West. Visiting choreographer Shohei Kikuchi, 51, wanders patiently around a San Jose rehearsal space, treading lightly and getting acclimated to the new world. A white scarf around his neck attests to the big-time cold he caught upon arrival from Japan. His sweats and tennis shoes are standard fare, but the bachi (drumsticks) protruding from his belt reveal his Eastern roots.

"Language has been very difficult," he says through an interpreter.

Instructions translated
In teaching, Kikuchi demonstrates movement to two dozen local performers, then Eijiro Ikegami, a powerful drummer for San Jose Taiko who could have been a samurai warrior in another life, translates Kikuchi's instructions and the performers' questions. When talk gets really technical, Ikegami whips out a pocket translator to convert English text into Japanese characters. His major in Japanese at UC-Irvine carries him the rest of the way.

The magnitude of the Pacific Ocean was never more evident than when San Jose Taiko began a collaboration, its first, with two major artistic directors from Japan for the company's 25th anniversary, being marked with a Saturday performance at Stanford University's Memorial Auditorium.

Contacted in Japan
The company sought out Kikuchi, who heads the Warabi-za company in Akita Prefecture, and composer Motofumi Yamaguchi of the Kodo company, based on remote Sado island. Each artist is making his first appearance with an U.S. company, though both have been here on tour before, with Warabi-za (or Warabi Group) presenting dances, theater and movement and Kodo focusing on taiko drumming.

San Jose Taiko, a stellar Japanese-American company, does some dance, a lot of movement and even more drumming. It creates its own choreography and music, and its own designs for products from an instrument maker who works in the shadow of Mt. Shasta. In pitch and appearance, its drums aren't Japanese at all.

After commissioning Yamaguchi, 51, to compose music for the anniversary, San Jose Taiko had to make and send off performance videos to him so that he could create compatible scores and fax them back to California.

Impression vague
"It was hard to sense the feeling of San Jose Taiko," Yamaguchi says. "I thought originally that Kodo and San Jose Taiko were the same, but their languages were actually different I need to learn a better system of communicating the music.

"Yamaguchi was talking earlier this week at Taiko's Ninth Street rehearsal space inside a large warehouse. The saving grace during the collaboration has been the patience and enthusiasm of the company's founder-directors, Roy and P.J. Hirabayashi, a married couple who have spent three years putting this anniversary program together.

Their company was the third taiko group to be formed in the United States. Today, there are 100 such companies. But unlike their Japanese counterparts, San Jose Taiko was a bootstrap operation, without government funding or a school dedicated to training performers. Roy Hirabayashi handles administrative chores, while P.J. Hirabayashi oversees performance and creativity.

"Roy and P.J.have a real passion for taiko - I was very moved by it," says Kikuchi "It's very tough to start from nothing. Everyone (here) has a great energy, and it would be nice if all this could blossom into P.J.'s vision."

Since planning the collaboration, P.J. Hirabayashi has seen it as a two way street rather than just a learning experience for her company. "They (the Japanese visitors) wanted to understand why we exist, why we play taiko," she explains enthusiastically.

They took the visiting teachers to one of the few surviving farms in San Jose where Japanese is spoken, fed them in a Japanese restaurant and showed them around the Japanese American Resource Center.

Buddhist roots
San Jose, Taiko got its start in 1973, when it formed as a recreational group at a local Buddhist , temple, without costumes, budget or teacher.

"That was a plus for us," says Roy Hirabayashi. "Since we didn't have the sensei (teacher), we were more experimental. We created our own movement and wrote our own music. Instead of having a (traditional) master-teacher, we worked collectively. We even have to look at ourselves as a school- we train everybody"

The two visiting artists have been careful not to impose their traditions on the troupe. Yamaguchi does not spell out all the musical details. "I look for the expressiveness of the artists," he says. "Working with San Jose Taiko, it feels to me like just planting the seeds. And then the flower grows."

Other new bridges
The collaboration will have an impact in Japan, too, since Kodo and Warabi-za had never worked together before.

"I'm very proud that we've been able to lead this move toward multiculturalism," says Roy Hirabayashi.

The Saturday program will feature two new works "Challenges," and "Gratitude," both reflecting San Jose Taiko's evolution, performed by an augmented ensemble of two dozen. Favorite repertory pieces will also be included.

Paul Hertelendy - Mercury News Music Writer