I wandered into a big hall which was part of Matsuri 2025. Japanese culture on show. On one side some stunning Ikebana. On the far side of the room, a man sitting in front of a very long instrument. An instrument unlike anything I had ever seen. I approached with some curiosity.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Its called a koto and it’s an ancient Japanese musical instrument”.

“And can you play it ?”

“Yes – I was hooked. “How and when did you learn? “

And he answered : “Fruitcake”.

“Fruitcake??” I urged him to continue – and he did.

David lived in Japan for four years. Few people own an oven. He invited a neighbour over to show her how to bake a fruitcake in his oven. While they were there chatting, waiting for the cake to bake, she asked if he had heard of a koto. No, he had not. She asked if he would be willing to learn and almost immediately led him to another elderly neighbour who confessed it had all been planned to entice him to play. They wanted to rope him in. He started lessons with this lovely elderly teacher and three years in he says he is still a novice at it as it takes years for proficiency.

He is now back in Brisbane, and we met him at Mitsuri celebrating Japanese culture where he showed us his instrument and played us a piece. I loved his story and his own immersion into this Japanese cultural musical instrument.

The koto is a Japanese plucked half tube zither instrument, and the national instrument of Japan. They are made from Paulownia wood aka as kiri. The most common uses 13 strings over movable bridges and they are played by adjusting the bridges and plucking the strings with the first three fingers of the right hand. Not sure what happens if you are left handed.

They were first introduced in the 7th to 8th Century in China. The koto of the chikuso was originally intended for blind men. Yatsuhashi Kengyo 1614 – 1685 was a blind musician and composer who changed the tunings and gave rise to a new style of koto.

Michio Miyagi (1894–1956), a blind composer, innovator, and performer, is considered to have been the first Japanese composer to combine western music and traditional koto music. Miyagi is largely regarded as being responsible for keeping the koto alive when traditional Japanese arts were being forgotten and replaced by Westernization. He wrote over 300 new works for the instrument.

There are bands both in Japan and the west that interpret and play the music.Nowadays they are bigger with more strings, played by women and men and combined with western music as well.

Sometimes these stories come to find me and connect all my interests and this one has certainly done that.