Biwa and Sumie at Microsoft Headquarters

In 2014, Soju Projekt presented a lecture-performance with Chikuzen-style Biwa master Kyokumi Tashiro at Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Kenneth E. Lawrence's pre-performance lecture provided background on the samurai warrior Yoshitsune in legend and history, and on the biwa (Japanese lute). The performance proper featured Kyokumi Tashiro performing the piece 'Funa Benkei' (Benkei on the Boat). The text of the piece, translated by members of Soju Projekt, was projected with paintings of scenes from the story by sumi-painter Kumiko Lawrence.

The story of 'Funa Benkei' is taken from 'Gikeiki,' an anonymous collection of legends that embroidered the life of the 12th century historical figure Yoshitsune. Similar in form to the Noh play of the same name, the story is split evenly between the melancholy and the dramatic. The first section relates the sad parting of Yoshitsune, fleeing by boat with several of his followers, and his lover Shizuka. 

Shizuka, with no heart to dance, merely waves her sleeves in sorrow.  

‘Misfortune brings great pain,” she sings, “but trust in me.” A happy song, though the sea is carrying her love away. May wind and wave speed him on! 

Last year he bravely rode forth, leading an army westward, destroying the Taira and drowning them in the sea. Now all knew his name: Yoshitsune! But a despicable villain’s slander made him a hunted man, a tragic misunderstanding. With only the rising moon to guide him, he hastily abandoned the capital, fleeing with a dozen trusted companions towards the western provinces. Their lives, like all lives, are the sport of fate. They fled in boats downriver, adrift like clouds on the water, finally arriving at the ocean shore. 

“Take your places aboard. Let’s get this vessel underway!”  

Shizuka is speechless with weeping, but what must be shall be. Let all the world whisper as it will. In tears she removes hat and cloak, drops them at her feet and bids Yoshitsune farewell. 

But the story immediately shifts from sadness to the supernatural.

“Pull away! Put your backs into it!”  

It is a good, stout ship and the day is perfect, surely a sign of coming good fortune. 

But a cloud hangs over Mount Muko where there was no cloud before. It comes their way. 

An outstanding crew, but this is no ordinary storm. “Look lively!” High winds; the waves rise. They are in the teeth of a tremendous gale. The ship has no hope of ever reaching land.  

Eerie! Spirits gather like clouds, rising, riding the uproarious sea. Wave-borne upon the ocean, the whole host of the Taira, who, not long since, drowned in the west, all of them! For them, the moment is perfect to vent upon all their pent-up rage. All hearts quake with terror as they stare, wide-eyed. “The Taira nobles drowned in the battle of Dan-no-ura now swarm before our eyes,” one man cries, “evil spirits resolved to destroy us!”  

“Hold your tongue,” shouts the captain.  

Before them, with a sword at his waist and gripping a halberd, they see the phantom of Tomomori, chief commander of the Heike. He glares at the ship. “Today, I will drown Yoshitsune in the sea!” With a scream he grips his halberd for battle, sweeps it wide. It curls like the waves, kicks high the salt foam, until all sight grows dim. 

Yoshitsune draws his sword and the two close in combat, but Yoshitsune’s skill is skill is useless against such a foe, a foe not of this earth. The warrior-monk Benkei protects his lord Yoshitsune by thrusting himself between the two. Rhythmically rasping together his rosary beads he summons the wrathful guardians of the four directions, in their center Fudo the Unmoving, whose noose binds evil powers. Together the protector divinities form a mandala. Fiercely Benkei prays until Tomomori’s sinister spirit staggers back. Benkei lends his strength to the straining crew as they row the ship on toward the distant shore. The evil spirit, pursues them still, but prayer and sword and the ebbing tide bear him, tossing and rocking, far across the waves: he disappears. 

Kyokumi Tashiro began her training in Chikuzen Biwa in 1993 with her grandmother, Kyokuei Kubo.  Her grandmother was one of only a few masters trained by the original Chikuzen Biwa Master Kyokushu Tachibana (1892-1967). Under her grandmother’s training, Kyokumi received her master certification in 2000. She received her master certification from the Chikuzen Biwa Nihon Tachibana Association and is a member of the Japan Biwa Music Society. She has an amazing voice. Soju Projekt looks forward to working with her more in the future.

Ken's "The City of Brass' in Spring 2014 issue of Parabola Magazine.

My retelling of 'The City of Brass' was featured in the Spring 2014 issue of Parabola Magazine. When I first heard about the theme of the issue, wisdom, many stories from epics and great books, both East and West, came to mind. A tale from the Bible or the Mahabharata? Something from Rumi's Masnavi or the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi? Irish, Mandinka, Chinese... So many world traditions to choose from! I was a bit overwhelmed at first, but finally a personal quirk won out: I have a love of twists. I chose to retell 'The City of Brass' not so much to be shocking as to be unpredictable. 

What intrigued me about 'The City of Brass' is the presentation of wisdom, or the attainment of it, as a bad thing. Few people, even the most virulent anti-intellectuals among us, disdain wisdom. But in the frame story as I present it, Scheherazade, though a captive to and a victim of her husband's mental illness - she has lived in terror for five hundred and sixty-five nights - is able to use her only protection, her stories, as a weapon. She yearns for freedom, which she perceives as blue, the color of sky. In her anger and resentment, she plots a kind of revenge, the revealing of a wisdom "pure and unbearable."

The form of the Thousand Nights and a Night, stories-within-stories (within-stories-within-stories...), has long been intriguing to me. It changed my way of reading, may way of writing, even my way of experiencing life. Compressing the stories-within-stories in 'The City of Brass' into a short-story length suitable for a magazine exacerbated its dreamlike qualities, I think, to great effect (at one point Scheherazade tells the story of Musa telling the story of an ifrit of the jinn telling the story of his war against Solomon). 

In Scheherazade's story, Musa, the protagonist, returns from his journeys with riches and marvelous gifts. He has witnessed wonders, but rather than enjoy the fruits of his labor and be celebrated at a feast, he wants nothing of fame or worldly possessions. He is tired, disillusioned and cynical. He has attained wisdom: Even the greatest kings are now food for worms, their empires crumbled to dust. 

There is a spider crouching on the shoulder of each of us, waiting for its moment, and that spider is death. Death is the clearest truth. That is the wisdom that Scheherazade shares with her husband.

Noh in Seattle

 

 

Because of my work at the National Noh Theatre and the International Theatre Institute, and as a columnist for the Japan Times specializing in traditional Japanese music and theater, I’ve seen hundreds of Noh performances over the years by many top performers, but I was still knocked out last weekend by the power of Munenori Takeda and Fumiyuki Takeda, two Noh artists visiting from Japan, when I heard them chanting on Bainbridge Island. Truly excellent! They flew out yesterday and already I’m going through withdrawals!

 

 Photo courtesy of   SUGOI EXPERIENCE JAPAN

 

Ken and Kumiko's work on Parabola Magazine - Mahabharata

Saluang Flute

The saluang is a bamboo flute of the Minangkabau people of Western Sumatra, Indonesia. I studied it in preparation for a performance of Randai, a martial-arts based dance-drama. It has a airy sound, dry and meditative, and requires circular breathing (breathing in through the nose while blowing out through the mouth with no break in sound). Through it I lose time.

 

Photo by Kumiko Lawrence

 

Sound Healing session at asaltmine Arium

Himalayan Singing Bowl certified

There is a shimmering, like leaves on a tree when it sways in the breeze. Our minds perceive and simplify. We’ve seen it before, many times. It is a tree. They are leaves. The wind is blowing. But we do not, perhaps cannot, perceive the whole: The tree, that particular tree, is not the same as it was yesterday. Our experiences in the last twenty-four hours have changed our way of perceiving. We feel we’re standing in the exact same spot, but that spot, our posture, the slight change of light has altered our perception. The tree, the leaves, the self, change imperceptibly with each moment.

It is the same with sound.

I am now a certified practitioner of Himalayan singing bowl healing. My instructor, Suren Shrestha, showed me an effective treatment to release stress and muscle tension or to cure insomnia and migraine headaches. Gently strike an inverted large bowl while it rests on your head. In the west we would call the sound produced a ‘drone’, a sustained sound or repeated note, but the actual sound is extremely complex, like sunlight reflected off a lake, an infinity of shifting angles. The mind struggles to analyze the patterns, is overwhelmed, shuts down. The mind’s surrender is relaxation. 
Suren Shrestha : http://surenshrestha.com/

Mahabharata (The magazine Parabola)

Kumiko Lawrence’s sumi-paintings are featured in the summer 2013 issue of the magazine Parabola together with a Mahabharata-based short story by Kenneth E Lawrence . Thank you all for making this possible.

  Sumi Kumi Works.com

Soju Kai Recap by Heather Porter

Our friend Heather Porter posted a recap of Soju Kai’s March 24 lecture/performance ‘Healing in Noh’ on her blog ‘Hanamichi’. An excellent recap with great photography by Heather Jackson.

Healing in Noh @ Nagomi Tea House

On March 24 Soju Kai presented a lecture/demonstration at the Nagomi Teahouse in Seattle’s International District. I recently began writing a monthly column for the Hokubei Houchi (North American Post) newspaper entitled ‘Tales from the Noh’. During our first meeting there, we were pleasantly surprised to discover the Nagomi Teahouse downstairs, a beautiful and intimate space.

We chose as our theme for the presentation ‘Healing in Noh’, and focused on specifically on healing through sympathy as expressed in the Noh play ‘Atsumori’. Kumiko opened the performance with a celebratory chant from the play ‘Tsurukame’. I then spoke on the music, movement and chant of Noh, as well as its history and esthetics. Kumiko demonstrated jo-ha-kyu, then danced a section of the play ‘Yuya’.

The presentation also featured backstage photos of Kumiko’s father Yoshio Negishi, a licensed Noh performer. Masks carved by Kumiko’s mother, Yukie Negishi, a Noh performer and accomplished Noh mask carver, were modeled by stage performer/dancer Yuuki Hoashi.

The performance continued with a staged reading of my retelling of the play ‘Atsumori’, as published in the Summer 2012 issue of the journal Parabola. Kumiko’s sumi paintings of scenes from the play were also featured.

The performance ended with a video clip from a live performance of ‘Atsumori’, danced by Hideo Fukuhara, Kumiko’s uncle.

Photography courtesy of Heather Jackson.

Vikings

Like most bookworms, I tend to see TV as a distraction. Why waste time watching TV when there are so many good books lining my walls just begging to be read? No great sacrifice, really, since 98.9% of what's on is unwatchable. Recently, however, I happened onto a new show that- dare I say it? - I watch religiously.

I originally gave 'Vikings' a try because I love Icelandic sagas. I've read a dozen or so, mostly Penguin classics, and I thought maybe the new series would therefore be at least mildly entertaining. So far (three episodes in) I've been very impressed with just how true to the original culture and history the show is.

I get most of my televized history from lectures on C-SPAN. I loved the History Channel when it first started broadcasting, but lately it seems to only have marathon showings of Pawn Kings, a sort of rustic Shopping Network glorification of pawn shop shoppers, so 'Vikings' has been a very pleasant surprise.

Hopefully the show will be a big hit. I don't care much for spinoffs, generally speaking, but if a publisher or two wants to hop on the bandwagon, maybe they'll finally release some decent audiobooks of some of the sagas. That, if it happens, would be a rare example of commercial forces working in my favor.

 

Mahabharata

I'm currently working on a novel, a new version of the Mahabharata. My influences are many, including 'The Tales of a Thousand Nights and a Night' and Indian cookbooks, but the strongest influence (aside from the Mahabharata itself) is the Japanese Noh theatre.

Sumi ink painting of Draupadi by Kumiko Lawrence.

Soju Kai Performance

 

Soju Kai presented several lecture/performances in 2012, and we are currently scheduling our 2013 tour.

Above is a photo from our February 16 presentation at East Shore Unitarian Church (Bellevue,WA) for their Adult Program.  The performance had 'Healing in Noh' as its theme, and focused on the stories 'Hagoromo' and 'Atsumori'. It featured a lecture 'What is Noh?', dance and chant, and Kumiko's sumi ink paintings.

Our next performance will be on March 24th at Nagomi Tea House in Seattle.

We plan to do a Heike Biwa Katari (storytelling) series this spring and summer. We have long wanted to do a Heike Monogatari storytelling series in this style, the way it has been done in Japan for over a thousand years. 

2013 will be an exciting year!

The Epic of Kelefaa Saane

The Epic of Kelefaa Saane describes the life and exploits of a legendary warrior prince of the Mandinka people of West Africa. African epics, when published in English, are usually translations of transcriptions from oral recitations by griots. These recitations are often done before a live audience that knows the stories very well. The end result, yes, is often repetitive or confusing to the uninitiated. But I found this particular epic to be a good read, less confusing than most, and I found the story to be powerful and the variety of ways it was presented to be fascinating. A very enjoyable read.

Kumiko's Art on Display

Kumiko's art is on display at South Bellevue Community Center. One of the series "Atsumori", a samurai story from one of the Noh dramas.