Player spotlight:
Celestine TN
It’s hard to explain why I started learning how to play the koto without diving a little too deep into my personal history. Growing up half Japanese, I traveled to Japan every few years to spend a few humid, sweltering weeks getting heat rashes and mosquito bites, buying clip-on earrings in Harajuku, and following my mom to kabuki performances and lunches with her old friends. With fairly regular contact with Japanese culture, I’d certainly heard koto music before. In passing, I felt it to be a very serious, somber, and orderly instrument. Throughout my childhood, I spent time in and out of weekend Japanese schools, with shodo calligraphy tutors or Japanese piano teachers, but nothing really stuck. I could say, generously, that I took my cultural heritage for granted, but that wouldn’t be quite right. More than that, I often felt uncomfortable in what I felt were very serious, somber, and orderly spaces. I often felt that my existence posed a problem to the order and that not knowing all the rules and customs that upheld the order made me a constant inconvenience.
Connecting to Japan
It wasn’t until I moved 4,000 miles away from home to go to college that I realized that despite my poor language skills and limited cultural knowledge, I am still Japanese. The constant ache of missing my mom was a clear reminder. Every time the homesickness got especially bad, I journeyed out of my narrow room to try find one of the many (often questionable) Japanese restaurants in the city. I heard someone speaking Japanese in the kitchen section of a department store once and had to crouch down by some shelves of pots and pans to have a covert cry. I gradually learned that the fundamental building blocks that make up your parents are fundamental parts of you too. Little by little, I started trying to figure out how to be my own version of Japanese. I started self-studying the language, and worked for Japanese businesses and organizations, eventually landing at the one that would hand me free tickets to the Oregon Koto-Kai Fall Concert.
Elements of Japanese culture that seemed old and serious to me, like the koto, always felt most unapproachable, but sitting in the audience that day I felt a surge of connection. Not only was the music beautiful and evocative, but it felt creative and full of energy. I asked Mitsuki Sensei to take me on soon after. Since then, I have had many happy discoveries. I’ve loved learning to read koto sheet music, building dexterity, and mastering beautiful songs. I’ve discovered that my cats love to be scratched on the head with koto picks. I’ve found an incredible community of warm and talented people, who I’m privileged to get to learn from and play music with. Most of all, I’m constantly astounded by how lucky our community is to have such an extraordinarily good teacher, who every two weeks provides a joyful, patient environment where I can steadily become more myself.