Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko is a taiko drumming group founded in 1972. For around 50 years since its establishment, it has filled Kurashiki with the sound of taiko.
Yamabe Taishi has held drumsticks since he was old enough to understand the world, and has been active as a member of Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko. Today, he not only captivates people with the sound of taiko, but is also active as a director pursuing new possibilities for the instrument.
On March 2, 2024, the 38th Kurashiki Music Festival is scheduled to present “Mebae Izuru,” a performance combining the sounds of traditional Japanese instrumentalists with lighting effects.
On March 10, 2024, a performance of “Japanese Taiko Concert” is scheduled, with Yamabe performing alongside members of Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko.
Let’s explore the thoughts that taiko performer Yamabe brings to music.
The information presented was accurate when this article was published in February 2024. Please note that it may differ from current information.
Yamabe Taishi and Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko
What kind of person is Yamabe Taishi, a taiko performer who grew up in Kurashiki? And how did Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko come into being?
Here’s an introduction to Yamabe and Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko.
Taiko performer Yamabe Taishi
Yamabe Taishi is a taiko performer from Kurashiki City. He has been involved in taiko performance since childhood and has been active as a member of Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko.
After graduating from high school, he began working as a professional taiko performer. Today, he also directs stage productions and composes music, while expanding his activities overseas.
He has also performed with musicians from other musical fields, sharing the profound appeal of taiko.
In addition to performing, he pursues new possibilities for taiko as a director, incorporating expressive techniques that bring out its appeal.
Yamabe is a leading Japanese taiko performer nurtured by Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko.
What is Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko?
Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko is a taiko drumming group founded in Kurashiki City in 1972.
Its founder, Koyama Hiroshi, spent his student years in Tokyo. When he returned to his hometown of Kurashiki, he established Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko.
Many areas of Tokyo held lively festivals, but Koyama felt that Kurashiki had no festivals as bustling as those in Tokyo. He came up with taiko performances as a way to liven up the town.
Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko began when they borrowed a taiko drum from a storehouse belonging to the Ohara family and started performing at Achi Shrine.
Even today, around 50 years later, the group continues to perform, primarily in Kurashiki.
Yamabe’s encounter with taiko
Taiko was part of everyday life for Yamabe from an early age. How did he come to engage with it?
Let’s go back to Yamabe’s first encounter with taiko.
Taiko was simply part of everyday life
Taiko was such a part of Yamabe’s everyday life that he says, “I was playing taiko by the time I was old enough to understand the world.”
Influenced by his father, who was a member of Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko, Yamabe spent his childhood with taiko and has no memory of starting to play. He has played since he was so young that he describes himself as having “been born holding drumsticks.”
He first performed on stage when he was about three. After that, he was active as a member of Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko, gathering every day at 7 p.m. and practicing until 11 p.m.
Because taiko was so commonplace, Yamabe mistakenly assumed that everyone thought of it as something familiar.
When visiting a friend’s home, for example, he could see that other families didn’t have taiko drums, so he understood that they weren’t physically close at hand. But he says he hadn’t realized that people also had little awareness of taiko as a concept.
This experience has continued to inform his work as a professional. Yamabe says that when planning and directing performances, he considers how to make taiko accessible to people encountering it for the first time.
Becoming a taiko performer was only natural
When he was in high school and faced with choosing a career path, Yamabe hadn’t given much thought to his future.
He had only a vague sense that “I’d probably make a living playing taiko,” and those around him likewise thought it was only natural that Yamabe would pursue taiko.
Generally, those pursuing a career in music have two options: work independently as an artist or join an organization where a professional group performs.
Yamabe chose to work independently, but it wasn’t a firm decision—it was an unconscious choice. Perhaps taiko’s deep familiarity led him down that path.
He then worked across Japan as a taiko performer based in Kurashiki. He moved his base to Tokyo at age 26, when work there began to increase. He started spending half of each month in Kurashiki and the other half in Tokyo.
Alongside performing, he also began working with colleagues on stage direction.
However, Yamabe felt uneasy about not having a home in the city where he was based for his creative work. Traveling back and forth between Kurashiki and Tokyo with large amounts of luggage made him feel disconnected from his colleagues, and he says he felt uncomfortable, like an outsider.
To resolve the unease he felt while traveling between Tokyo and Kurashiki, Yamabe moved to Tokyo. He began focusing on his creative work.
Expanding the world of music
Yamabe shares the appeal of taiko through original staging, and his perspective changed as he encountered music beyond taiko.
Let’s trace how he went from being a taiko performer to working as a director.
Music in Kurashiki and music in Tokyo
Through his creative work in Tokyo, Yamabe discovered how broad the world of music is.
When he was working in Kurashiki, he only looked at music associated with taiko. With taiko as his starting point, he naturally connected with traditional Japanese musicians, including shamisen and shakuhachi players.
He could make a living by sharing the appeal of music within the world of traditional Japanese instruments such as taiko.
In Tokyo, however, what was expected was a much broader range of music. He had to convey the appeal of taiko in other genres, including classical music and jazz.
Simply playing taiko wasn’t enough for people to recognize its appeal. He began performing in a way that conveyed its appeal by integrating taiko into music from other worlds.
“Being good at performing within the world of taiko is different from being good at performing in the world of music,” Yamabe says.
By moving his base of operations to Tokyo, he encountered the wider world of music—something he hadn’t noticed when he played only taiko.
Engagement with art and creating works
Yamabe’s introduction to the world beyond taiko came through meeting someone from a well-known entertainment agency. This person encouraged him to experience first-rate art.
When he lived in Kurashiki, he wasn’t interested in anything beyond taiko. But he began attending dance and musical performances and visiting art museums exhibiting paintings and sculptures.
Among the many forms of art he encountered, contemporary dance particularly struck a chord with Yamabe. He was captivated by its free physical expression, unconstrained by set forms.
After a while, he became able to recognize what kinds of styles he liked, regardless of the art form, whether painting, sculpture, or something else.
The artist whose work Yamabe clearly felt he liked was Lee Ufan. As he came to understand what moved him, Yamabe developed a deeper understanding of himself, and the habit of engaging with art naturally took root.
Yamabe’s sensibility, heightened by experiencing many forms of art, gradually began to find expression in the way he staged his taiko performances.
Taiko performer and director
He began combining taiko performance with the things that had touched his sensibilities and expressing them through staging when he was 30.
He had directed performances before then, but his role had been limited to things like deciding the order of the pieces and the lighting setup, with the staging focused solely on taiko.
Yamabe says that the things he liked in the art world and taiko performance began to fit together naturally, and ideas about what he wanted to convey through staging started to emerge.
One taiko performance expressing the sensibility he developed through art is “Mebae Izuru,” scheduled for March 2, 2024. Laser lighting effects bring out new appeal in taiko.
He got the idea to weave lighting effects into taiko performance from a work he saw when he attended a world projection-mapping competition held in Tokyo.
The future of taiko and his hometown, Kurashiki
Yamabe has changed both as a taiko performer and as a director. How have his feelings toward his hometown of Kurashiki changed?
Let’s take a closer look at his thoughts on Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko and Kurashiki.
The role of Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko
Inspired by art, Yamabe has created unprecedented stage productions as a taiko performer.
He has also shown a desire to bring change to Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko, which has a history of around 50 years.
“Protecting Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko doesn’t mean passing it down without changing what it is. It means continuing to create an environment where taiko can keep sounding in Kurashiki,” Yamabe says.
Seeing the world beyond Kurashiki changed Yamabe’s taiko performances. Now he is trying to transform Kurashiki Tenryo Taiko into a form that Kurashiki will embrace.
How Yamabe Has Changed—and the Kurashiki That Hasn’t
Since moving his base of operations to Tokyo, Yamabe’s perspective on Kurashiki has changed.
The Bikan Historical Area and the scenery of the Seto Inland Sea had been familiar sights since he was born, and he had never thought of them as beautiful.
However, after spending time surrounded by buildings in the city center, he came to appreciate the beauty of the historic streets and the gentle waves of the Seto Inland Sea.
Yamabe had also been told since childhood that Kurashiki was a city of culture, but he had not truly felt that before leaving Kurashiki.
However, as he became active as an artist, Yamabe came to feel that Kurashiki was a special place. He realized that it was a rare place where culture and art are closely woven into daily life, with museums and concert halls amid streetscapes that have remained since the Edo period.
“Mebae Izuru” and “Japanese Taiko Concert,” scheduled for March 2024, are homecoming performances. They express what Yamabe has seen since leaving Kurashiki.
“There are things I can express precisely because I grew up in Kurashiki,” Yamabe said.
From the Writer
As I listened to Yamabe talk, a passage came to mind.
“The river flows on without end, yet its waters are never the same”—the opening line of “Hojoki,” an essay found in classical Japanese textbooks. It means, “The river’s water keeps flowing without end, but the water that was there before has flowed away.”
For a river to remain beautiful, fresh water must circulate through it constantly. The secret to its beauty lies in this curious state of affairs: the river itself remains unchanged, while the water that makes it up is always changing.
Yamabe has brought new forms of expression into the world of taiko to convey its appeal.
Perhaps, for Yamabe, taiko is the river, and expression is the water.
As I listened to this outstanding taiko performer, I felt deeply the beauty of a river’s flow.
![[Held Saturday, March 2 and Sunday, March 10] Performances created by Yamabe Taishi, one of Japan’s leading taiko performers: “Mebae Izuru” and “Japanese Taiko Concert”](https://media.kuratoco.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/23010906/DSC01911.jpg)
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