MIYAMOTO

Yesterday, I ventured to Miyamoto Japanese Percussion and Festival Store in western Asakusa. While I was still searching for the store, I realized that it was in same neighborhood as the Japanese Percussion Center – I began to worry that maybe the two stores were in fact the same story, because, I thought, what were the odds that there were two multi-floor percussion shops in same neighborhood? (Please note that the vast majority of streets in Tokyo do not have names; thus, navigating around the city can be quite difficult. The truth is that even if there consistently were street signs, I couldn’t read them). As it turns out Miyamoto and the JPC are two blocks from one another.

Entering Miyamoto, you are engulfed in a sea of traditional drums, which are all scattered around an assortment of festival paraphernalia. Just as JPC had a wide array of international percussion instruments, Miyamoto had a diverse collection of Japanese drums, the bulk of which I never even seen or heard before! Most of the drums were nagado daiko drums; the standard drum of taiko. (Just so you know, “taiko” and “daiko” are the same thing: just like “Taoism” is pronounced with a D-sound, and therefore sometimes spelt “Daoism”). All of the drums were made of natural materials: finished wood for the shell and animal-hide for the heads. There also was a modest collection of brass hand cymbals.

Something I noticed about the drums was that there are several different types of drum heads and ways to fasten the head itself. Some heads fit perfectly on the drum, like any normal Western drum; yet, some were (intentionally) much larger than the shell of the drum. Furthermore, there were three different means of securing the head to the drum: tying ropes from the top head to the bottom head, in a manner very similar to the Indian dholak; some had metal lugs and bolts to secure the head, almost like Western snare drums; and most commonly, particularly with the nagado daiko drums, the heads were stapled with a semi-circle bolt (I honestly don’t know what the right word for it is; in the pictures, it is the black circular doohickey on the edge of the head). I am not sure how a nagado daiko would be tuned, since the head seems so intact to the drum.

Another neat aspect of Miyamoto was the collection of drumsticks. Unlike Western drumsticks that have a definitive top and bottom of the stick, the taiko sticks are evenly shaped. The range of the stick size was extremely impressive, varying from (length/width) 32cm/18mm to 63cm/55mm. (I’m not on the metric system either, so just imagine a really small thin stick almost like a long pencil to a decent-sized tree branch). There was even one kind of stick that was flat and only about a quarter inch wide, but almost three feet long!

The drums ranged in price, anywhere from about ¥10,000 to ¥700,000 (that’s like $85 to $6,000). In their catalogue, I even saw a drum for ¥1,995,000 – about $18,000! So needless to say, I refrained from purchasing one. I figure that it Sado Island should provide ample opportunity for that. Also, like my experience in Fiji, I want to witness the crafting of my drum, so I know its history!

After I visit the Drum Museum – which is above Miyamoto – tomorrow and learn more about what I saw in the shop, I will write more in detail about all of these Japanese drums. Unfortunately, no one spoke English at the shop. This, of course, was frustrating; yet, just by studying the drums themselves, I was able to learn about them. There were instructional books of how to play the different drums, but they were all in Japanese. Some did have pictures, so I might end up picking one up.

I spent almost two hours in Miyamoto. It was kind of like being in Japanese drum heaven! I can’t wait until I get to check out the museum!