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MONTHLY NEWS March 1998 A Young Blind Koto Player Wins Prize |
A blind 16-year-old Japanese took third place in an international music contest for high school students with a stirring performance on the koto, a traditional Japanese harp.
About 300 students from 26 countries gathered in Gunma Prefecture last November for the contest; besides music, competition was also held in the visual and other arts. There was no first-place winner in the music division.
Blind since birth, Yuji Sawamura is now a tenth grader at the University of Tsukuba School for the Blind. He's been sensitive to sound since he was very young; he remembers being captivated by the rustling of leaves in the wind, tapping of rain on an umbrella, and chirping of birds. He also showed great interest in traditional Japanese music. Even as a toddler, he would listen closely to broadcasts of such music on TV, and he often stood outside a shamisen teacher's house to listen to the strains of the three-stringed instrument. Sawamura's first encounter with the koto came when he was in fifth grade. He became fascinated with the instrument, whose tones, he felt, were more delicate than those of Western instruments. Musical scores are available in Braille, but since he can't "read" them while playing, he has to memorize and create an image of each tune in his mind before he starts. He attained proficiency fairly quickly despite this disadvantage and won an award in a contest for blind students when he was in middle school. At the November contest, one of the strings on Sawamura's koto snapped just as he was about to go onstage, forcing him to use a backup. But Sawamura kept his cool and performed well enough to win a prize.
Photo: Sawamura, in traditional Japanese costume, graces the stage with his splendid koto performance. (Yuji Sawamura) |
COMING UP: We'll be featuring the koto soon in Virtual Japanese Culture!
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