How Buzz Found Out What a Koto Is

Stock Exchange of Thailand Auditorium.  Bangkok, Thailand.  July 13, 2013.  To read that a koto is similar to the Chinese zheng, the Mongolian yatga, the Korean gayageum, and the Vietnamese đàn tranh, was not much help.  But, when I was invited by a Japanese friend, a superb pianist, to attend a “Sound of Japan” concert, I was eager to attend and to find out what a koto was.  In fact, the koto is a traditional Japanese stringed instrument.  It has 13 strings that are strung over 13 movable bridges along the width of the instrument.  Players can adjust the string pitches by moving these bridges before playing, and use three finger picks (on thumb, index finger, and middle finger) to pluck the strings.  It looks very difficult to play.

 As far as the music is concerned, it was too strange to my Western ears to appreciate on first hearing, but I very much enjoyed watching the koto player perform.  The rest of the evening was comprised of a Japanese women’s chorus singing beautiful, elegiac Japanese songs.  All in all, it was a fascinating evening, time well spent in enlarging my cultural appreciation.

Yuki Yamada from Japan played the koto in Bangkok on July 13.

The 15 women of the Japanese Association Women's Chorus, which has been performing in Bangkok since 1974.