An interview on Yellow Springs News
Noted Japanese composer Keiko Fujiie will present “Wilderness Mute,” a multidisciplinary work of music, image, poetry and Japanese Butoh dance, on Friday, Sept. 21, 7:30 p.m., in the Foundry Theater at Antioch College. The work is in response to the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, and is slated in conjunction with an exhibit at the Herndon Gallery looking at nuclear bombing archival materials. Fujiie is photographed in the Antioch College president’s house. (Photo by Megan Bachman)
Performance, exhibit at Antioch — Bringing A-bomb history to light
- Published: September 27, 2018
When Japanese atomic-bomb survivor Kyoko Hayashi traveled to the Trinity site in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was tested 50 years prior, she found burned mountains, ruined fields, and a “wilderness forced into silence.”
As Hayashi recounts in her poetic text, “From Trinity to Trinity,” although she was a hibakusha, literally “explosion-affected person,” as a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, she was moved to tears only after witnessing the bomb’s utter devastation of the natural world. She couldn’t even find an insect in the vast wasteland.
“Until now as I stand at the Trinity Site, I have thought it was we humans who were the first atomic bomb victims on Earth,” she wrote. “I was wrong. Here are my senior hibakusha. They are here but cannot cry or yell.”
“Wilderness Mute” by Japanese composer Keiko Fujiie derives its name from Hayashi’s empathetic encounter with the New Mexican desert. For Fujiie, a longtime resident of Nagasaki, the piece is inspired by survivors like Hayashi, who overcame their own suffering to connect with the suffering of others.
“She saw that Mother Earth was a victim before us,” Fujiie said of Hayashi. “It touched me so much.”
A collaborative, multidisciplinary work involving music, image, poetry and Japanese Butoh dance, “Wilderness Mute” is a response to the U.S. nuclear bombing of Nagasaki. The performance, only the second one in the U.S., will be held Friday, Sept. 21, 7:30 p.m., in the Foundry Theater at Antioch College.
The piece is in conjunction with “Nuclear Fallout: The Bomb in Three Archives,” with local artist Migiwa Orimo, which opens at Antioch’s Herndon Gallery the previous evening, Thursday, Sept. 20, at 7 p.m. with a talk by Orimo.
“Wilderness Mute” is a special performance funded by the Music of Remembrance, a Seattle, Wash., project that annually commissions compositions to remember the Holocaust. For its 20th anniversary year, the group commissioned two pieces on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, selecting for one of them Fujiie, a noted and frequently performed Japanese composer.
Fujiie’s work draws from the firsthand accounts of victims of the Nagasaki bombing, unimaginable in its horror. She sees the accounts as vital to preserve.
“This atomic bombing is not possible to imagine, so before the last victim passes away, I have to share,” she said.
At the same time, Fujiie also wants her audience to see the universal nature of the problem and the present-day threat of nuclear proliferation and nuclear waste.
“We don’t want so many sentimental lamentations,” she said. “It is a tragedy,” she added of the Japanese bombings,
“but it is a tragedy everywhere.”
“We are all in the highest risk.”
In addition to the voices of the Nagasaki victims, Fujiie incorporates the poetry of Nobel laureate physicist-turned-peace activist Yukawa Hidecki. His poem deals with the mistakes made by early nuclear scientists such as himself, who, for their impressive achievements, unleashed a new terror on the world.
Through her piece, Fujiie hopes American audiences remember not only the human toll of the Japanese bombings, but also reflect on the 15,000 nuclear weapons currently stockpiled around the globe, “each more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” she said, and the legacy of nuclear waste contamination in their own country.
“Not only [those in] Japan are the victims, but in your own country so many people are suffering so much,” she said.
Barcelona Rehearsal
program notes for Wilderness Mute
How many times have I been in Nagasaki in the broiling sun of August 9th….at the stroke of 11:02, the sirens ring, the bells reply, and we citizens offer a silent prayer. Even with all my empathic power, I cannot imagine that August day. A sea of fire, flesh burning— the sudden agonies and depths of despair. We who were not present cannot possibly understand this holocaust.
While checking the final instrument drafts of this work, the copyist asked me if I would like to insert a dedication to be placed under the title. I hesitated, thinking of Sumiteru Taniguchi, a Nagasaki survivor who had died just ten days before. A famous image of his wounded back rose to my mind: a boy with his skin burned horribly and an angry scarlet color. Even as he worked as a postman in Nagasaki, he dedicated his life to activism to prohibit nuclear weapons. A choice for the Nobel Peace Prize, he did not receive it despite his nomination in 2015.
However, for him this was no matter. His message was unwavering for over seventy years:
"No more Hiroshima, no more Nagasaki, no more Hibakusha, no more war".
This phrase echoes in my work.
When he gave a lecture to students in New York, he showed them the image of his ruined back. Many of them exclaimed “oh my God!” and took photos of that photo with their smartphones. They asked if he had ever been apologized to by the United States, but he was resolute in his answer: "I am not here to be apologized to, I came here to insist on the total abolition of nuclear weapons".
Full of passion for his mission, and worrying incessantly about the future, his soul finally left his deeply injured body at the age of eighty-eight. Despite the damage to his body, he always looked so beautiful and calm with pathos.
There was a time when artists could foresee the future. This kind of vision is vital.
We should not be incapable of our own distress.
We need to look to that future, and make desperate efforts for it.
Sumiteru Taniguchi never appealed to pity. He wanted us to never become victims.
So I dedicate my music not to him, but to you. To all of you whom he cared about. His burned body was his testament: “I want you to understand, if only a little, the horror of nuclear weapons.”
Keiko Fujiie at Kyoto September 2017
NAMU 南無 for Timpani, Japanese Drum and Children Choir
After the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear accident
In 2011, Ms Chieko Umezu asked me to write a solo piece for marimba, as conceived by Chikuzan Takahashi, the outstanding and much loved Tsugaru-shamisen player. Also, an admirer of his playing, I thought the marimba, however, the wrong choice for the purpose. I suggested that instead I might be able to do something with timpani. After a six month struggle (January to June, 2012), I composed a suite that was, perhaps, very different from which Ms Umezu expected. I also felt that in course of our communication and discussion, I had arrived at an unexpected place. In reality, "solo pieces" constitute not only solo for timpani but also solos for many other particular or unusual instruments. In my mind’s eye, it is easier to imagine it as a part of bigger structure (big ensemble/long piece).
Ms Umezu pointed out that the Tsugaru-shamisen indeed expresses very percussive sounds similar to the flamenco guitar. This brings to mind the old Japanese word ‘hayashi’ (‘hayasu’ meaning to ‘inspire’). A singer is aroused with the spirit, as the giver and recipient of this mutual ‘in-spiriting’ comprise a harmonious, flowing and interchangeable whole. Now, if Chikuzan, Paco de Lucia or other excellent accompanist attract attention merely with the expectation that they are supreme soloists they will leave us, surely, suspended in midair; for who would receive such spirit? This is not to deny the veracity of "solo" performance. Simply, that the precision of the Tsugaru-shamisen solo is already poised for transfer to another particular form, the timpani solo. I considered that these real-world percussion instruments, perhaps, in their core, were made to ‘in-spirit’ or ignite others and must more easily signal the sense of ‘hayashi.’ As the composition progressed, however, the piece became increasingly difficult to play and, contrarily, came to express the shamisen's non-percussive elements!
In order to solve this strangely twisted situation, I tried to walk back the way Chikuzan had walked, to know and to find the things that inspired him, the things surrounding him and what he desired to express. The whole process had gradually moved away from his shamisen but the center of the concentric circle had always been Chikuzan.
The construction of the suite comprises five sections: 1. Prelude 2. Hon-choshi 3. Ni-agari 4. San-sagari 5. The call. As a traditional Japanese instrument, the manner of playing the shamisen is akin to ‘recitation.’ Thus, I hoped to preserve its characteristic intervals and grooves. However, regarding the first piece, the Prelude constitutes the process of building up, feeling the intervals in the body: put differently, ‘the first memories of sound’ involving a maximum dynamic range from ppp (an omen) to fff (a pole) and overtone singing.
Ms Umezu’s purpose was not merely to provide an hommage to Chikuzan. She was desirous also of a ‘chinkon,’ a calming of the spirit, a requiem, a prayer for the repose of the souls for her home region – in the northeastern region of Japan - which suffered from the Great East Japan Earthquake unleashed in 2011.
Chikuzan found time to sit in the mountains listening to the whispering of the woods and the never-ending songs of birds and his mind would flit back to the painful memories when he was begging door to door, with his shamisen, throughout the seasons and the changing landscape of the north. If only he knew how his stark and beautiful mountains, the rivers and ocean had been polluted, radiated, in the ensuing nuclear power accident. How would he feel now?
It is a great consolation that old Chikuzan passed away before his heart burst with grief. What can be done in response to the travail of those who raised him, rebuked him, made him cry, the things that pleased him? Can we offer a prayer, a heartfelt mass for the repose of a soul?
"Chinkon" is not only for departed souls. It is also urgent desire to enshrine the souls of the living, those who feel powerless, helpless in their bodies. Above all, surely now is the time to offer up prayers with heart, mind and strength for the repose of the soul of nature, its living greatness, which has embraced and nurtured all creatures.
‘NAMU’ is likewise conceived of as ‘seeking refuge’ or ‘the everlasting.’ For example, the Buddhist chant, ‘NAMU AMIDABUTSU’ means to be united with AMIDABUTSU (Amida Buddha) where AMIDABUTSU and the prayer disappear into ‘the one.’ A self beyond individuality must break through individual consciousnessness to cry ‘Here I am!’ This powerful exclamation is ‘spiritual intuition,’ the self-awakening of ‘NAMU AMIDABUTSU,’ as the Buddhist philosopher Daisetsu Suzuki taught us.
The thing that the Kung People of the Kalahari Desert refer to as ‘NUM’ is somewhat similar to ‘NAMU.’ Around a blazing fire, women sing and clap, men dance. The more they dance, the more their ‘NUM’ becomes activated. At its quivering zenith, the soul departs, consciousness is transformed, expanding beyond individuality. The dancer at this stage is, the Kung maintain, empowered with healing.
Let us now proclaim this, “Brothers, form a circle, organized only by this essential, life-giving power.”
„LA-BAS OU ICI…“, projet interdisciplinaire en cours d’élaboration est un opéra en plusieurs langues, produit par Keiko Fujiie au Burkina Faso. Commencé en 2019, le projet en cours rassemble plusieurs cultures, langues et formes artistiques, tentant de créer une oeuvre d’art globale et ouverte. Keiko Fujiie et ses partenaires nous livrent en avant-première mondiale le premier acte de cet opéra.
Composition: Keiko Fujiie
libretto: Moyi MBOURANGON
Musiciens: Keiko Fujiie, Maboudou Sanou, Ibrahim Dembélé, Boureima Sanou
Video-art: Hervé Humbert
Keiko Fujiie est une compositrice internationale auteure de plusieurs opéras. Elle travaille actuellement à sa nouvelle création, un opéra en collaboration avec plusieurs musiciens traditionnels burkinabè. Avec ce projet, son expérience et sa connaissance profonde de la musique classique occidentale mais aussi de la musique traditionnelle de l’Asie de l’est, dialogue et se fond dans la musique ouest-africaine et son esprit.
【More information about this Project】
A Vermilion Calm
premiered in September 19th at Grotowski Institute, Wroclaw
