Kings Place, London, UK
Photo: Monika S. Jakubowska

The dark stage is peppered with cymbals that resemble flowers gazing at an artificial sun. A solitary bell is heard but its source is unclear. Midori Takada emerges from an aisle and ascends onto the stage, intermittently striking an upturned metal bowl. She walks through the field of alloy disks, picking between them, emphasising their tonal differences, before stopping at a suspended gong. Various textures are drawn from it. Takada scrapes the surface with brushes, then her thumb, persuading the instrument to sing like a migrating whale. She removes her black cloak, letting it drop to the floor – a deliberate gesture bookending her theatrical entrance.

Tonight’s performance centres around new scores for silent films about Japan. These surviving shorts, which are held at the BFI National Archive, date back to the end of the Meiji era, when Western film makers fixed their collective gaze on the country. Captured by outsiders at the dawn of the 20th century, Japan’s landscapes, buildings, fashions, customs and people are inevitably exoticised. However, the films remain vital records of a nation transitioning into modernity, and their restoration and digitisation was done to coincide with the 2020/21 Tokyo Olympics.

Takada’s live score makes full use of the percussive palette incorporating cymbals, variously pitched toms, marimba, grand piano and prerecorded sounds. The emphasis is always on the melodic potential of the instruments, particularly where the drums are concerned. Two of the toms are turned sideways, positioned at head height, while the remaining drums rest on the floor. Takada darts across them, with each isolated hit conjuring up an unexpected melodious note. Collectively, her rolls are evocative of countless liberated cobblestones flying across city barricades and raining fast onto the street.

As images of the Dotonbori Canal in Osaka flash upon the screen, Takada moves over to the marimba. Her complex repeating patterns instantly remind me of Philip Glass or, more precisely, Christoph Sietzen’s marimba rendering of the Glassworks track “Opening”. Whereas that piece is steeped in a fragile melancholy, Takada’s playing is vibrant, especially when synced to visions of urban life lost to time: people under parasols escaping the rain, street food vendors, a bonsai tree market, children lining up for school, silk factories, a parade celebrating the country’s victory in the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War.

The most arresting film is The Ainus Of Japan, which documents the cultural rites of an Indigenous group native to Hokkaido and Russia’s far east. We are shown dancing rituals, a drinking ceremony and married women marked by moustache-like facial tattoos. The Ainu were forced to assimilate into Japanese society and this anthropological record is a rare window into their culture.

The films are not showing constantly and when they’re turned off, Takada’s playing is brought to the centre. As she sits behind the piano and jams to prerecorded sounds emanating from the PA, there is a sense she is duetting with ghosts. Throughout the concert, Takada speaks to the audience about “beautiful memories from childhood” like the taste of honey and dates, a coconut tree standing on a desert hilltop or the “sound of red thread being torn”. These brief quizzical phrases contain a quotidian kind of poetry that complements the picturesque visions of Japan from 100 years ago. Like most memories, these images are emotionally vivid but fleeting and prone to distortion.

Ilia Rogatchevski
Originally published by The Wire, December 2023