In the summer of 2018, I was responsible for the music for the exhibition Brazilian Indigenous Chairs: Wild Animals and the Imagination, held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum.
Through multiple presentations and discussions with the core members of the project—including museum director Toyojiro Hida, architect Toyo Ito, and anthropologist Shinichi Nakazawa—we arrived at a clear conclusion: the music should take the form of a solo composition for gaku-biwa, a traditional Japanese lute used in gagaku.
The performance was given by one of Japan’s leading gaku-biwa players, Kahoru Nakamura.
The music presented in the exhibition is also available via digital release.
At first glance, it might seem natural to compose music directly related to Brazil for an exhibition centered on Brazilian Indigenous culture.
However, we ultimately chose not to take this approach.
One reason was the concern that pairing Brazilian-themed music with a Brazilian exhibition could create a museum-like sense of categorization, potentially undermining the distinctively artistic atmosphere of the Teien Art Museum itself.
Another, more fundamental issue was that of musical “accent” and locality.
As a Japanese composer, even with months of study, it would be difficult to truly grasp the regional nuances and lived specificity of Brazilian music.
To use an analogy: if an exhibition about Kanazawa were held overseas and Okinawan music were played simply because it was “Japanese,” the mismatch would be immediately apparent to many in Japan.
I could not be certain that I would avoid a similar misalignment when dealing with Brazilian music.
By turning these concerns inside out, a more constructive question emerged:
How might the museum’s own artistic atmosphere be further amplified, allowing the chairs arriving from Brazil to be experienced more vividly and imaginatively?
This question became the core concept of the work.
The gaku-biwa is one of Japan’s oldest instruments, made simply of wood and strings.
Its sound is both austere and refined, and while it is rarely heard in everyday life, it carries a sense of familiarity for me.
Whether this instrument shaped Japanese sensibility, or Japanese sensibility shaped the instrument, is impossible to say—but it undeniably resonates with something deeply rooted.
Composer Tōru Takemitsu once wrote of sound as “nature without a fixed body.”
Sound disappears the moment it is produced, leaving nothing behind.
All things in this world—nature included—are equally transient.
The gaku-biwa’s sound decays quickly, and silence and interval (ma) play an essential role in its music.
In this sense, it seems to mirror aspects of Japanese nature and aesthetics.
My intention was to let the animals arriving from Brazil roam and take flight within a nature formed by the sound of the gaku-biwa—
to allow them, for the brief duration of the exhibition, to experience the space freely, as if on a short journey.
Solo works for gaku-biwa are extremely rare in contemporary contexts, and opportunities to encounter the instrument in this form are limited.
Being able to collaborate with Kahoru Nakamura, a distinguished performer affiliated with the leading gagaku ensemble Reigakusha, was a rare and invaluable opportunity.
This project was not about illustrating cultural origins through sound, but about creating a subtle sonic environment in which different forms of nature, imagination, and temporality could coexist—quietly, and without explanation.
Ms. Kahoru Nakamura, one of Japan's leading Gakubiwa player performed his song.
The music that was actually played at the venue is also available for digital streaming.
Here is a shot of the Gakuiwa solo concert held at the venue.
