Music and Community Building, Imagined and Real: Nation, Race, Gender, and Politics in Taiko Drumming in Japan and North America
Prof. Masumi Izumi, Doshisha University

Thursday, May 12, 2004
UCLA - Asian American Studies Center Conference Room
3232 Campbell Hall

On May 12, Thursday, 4:00pm, the Asian American Studies Center is proud to present a talk by our Fulbright Visiting Scholar for 2004-2005, Prof. Masumi Izumi of Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. Prof. Izumi has worked on Japanese American and Japanese Canadian cultural history, with a number of scholarly works focusing on the role of Taiko drumming as a means of community building and ethnic revival in Japanese communities in North America as well as in Japan. This academic year, Prof. Izumi is a Fulbright Scholar affiliated with both the Asian American Studies Center and the Department of History at UCLA.

Paper Abstract:

In spite of its appearance as traditional folk music, taiko (Japanese drumming) as a performance art is a relatively new form of music that was developed after World War II. This paper reviews the development of taiko both in Japan and North America. Taiko has boosted nationalism for some Japanese people in the postwar period, and also has contributed to the reconstruction of Japanese American and Japanese Canadian communities since the late 1960s. The paper looks at taiko drumming as a site for many different kinds of expression: ethnic, gender, sexual, national, and spiritual identities. Applying James Scott's concept of "hidden transcript," the paper also elucidates how taiko has historically provided space for cultural and political resistance, both in Japan and North America.