Interviews

1. Decision between becoming a minister or musician

2. Starting Japanese American taiko their own way

3. Buddhist philosophy in taiko

4. Japanese American taiko is not Japanese taiko

5. Women playing taiko

6. Parents didn't accept me playing taiko in the beginning

7. Performing in the first Asian American play, "The Monkey Play"

8. Performing the koto and taiko drum together, in Japan

9. Taiko considered "Jazz" in the Philippines

10. Thoughts on the term, "Nikkei"

Johnny Mori

(b. 1949) Musician and arts educator and adminstrator.

Starting Japanese American taiko their own way

There was nothing like it around. And there was no teacher. There was a group of us that got together. We’ve seen movies. We listen to records. We saw pictures, but there was no teacher. So that’s a good thing and bad thing. It took us longer to evolve and to develop. But because of that, it made us, after a long period of time, more confident and secure of what we were trying to do because what we were doing was the original. We were just making it up as we were going along, anyway. Not only were we making up the music, we were also making the instruments because we couldn’t afford our own taikos from Japan. So we were creating that particular consciousness.

Again, all this is just totally unconscious. It’s not like, “We are going to develop and make Japanese American music. We are going to make Japanese American instruments. This is what we’re going to do. We set out for this goal to do it.” We didn’t do that. We had no idea. Now I can say what I’m saying [which] is that, unconsciously, this form evolved. This is what it is. This is what it came out to be.

drum music taiko

Date: October 15, 2004

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Art Hansen, Sojin Kim

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

John Yukio “Johnny” Mori is a musician and arts educator/administrator from Los Angeles.

Born November 30, 1949, he is the second son of his Issei father and Nisei mother. As a young man, he was an early activist, draft resistor, and general hell-raiser during the Asian American Movement in the 1970s, and ran the Amerasia Bookstore in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo. The shop was a co-operative bookseller that also served as a community meeting place and political action and performing arts venue. Mori went on to travel the globe as a percussionist for the jazz-fusion band, Hiroshima, before retiring in 2003.

Mori is a seminal member of Kinnara Taiko, one of the first Japanese American taiko groups in the United States. For the past 20 years, he has also taught workshops on taiko and Japanese American culture to participants ranging from elementary school to university students. He currently serves as the Producing Director of Performing Arts at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Los Angeles. (June 13, 2007)

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