Yurika Chiba was born in Saitama, Japan and grew up in Toronto, Canada. Yurika joined San Jose Taiko's Artistic Staff in 2007, and now tours internationally and nationally, as well as performing locally at festivals, schools and corporate events. Her responsibilities also include leading rehearsals, trainings and workshops, composing original works, and teaching in SJT’s various adult and youth programs. Yurika is a regular guest instructor/panelist at numerous conferences including North American Taiko Conferences (NATC), Connect, and Women & Taiko. Through the Alliance of California Traditional Arts (ACTA) she completed an apprenticeship with SJT founder, Roy Hirabayashi and is a graduate of the Multicultural Arts Leadership Institute (MALI). Yurika was one of 18 female and non-binary international taiko artists featured in the 2022 documentary, “Finding Her Beat.” Prior to joining San Jose Taiko, Yurika also played taiko in Tokushima, Melbourne, and Santa Rosa.

Also a visual artist (aka “TaikoCat”) with a degree in Psychology, Yurika is deeply interested in the applications of taiko/art to holistic and mental health. Yurika’s background in piano, dance, mixed media art, psychology and certification in TESOL combine in a unique mix to inform her work with taiko as an instrument for the individual’s expression of self and connection to community.

Introduction

What do we do when we do taiko? Most people think of taiko primarily as a performance art, so when we teach taiko we often focus on teaching students how to perform. Sometimes this means focusing on perfecting pieces, or how to play as a part of a group. Recently, though, I’ve started to think about how the act of doing taiko can also serve as a form of advocacy: as a means of training ourselves and others to amplify our own voices and spirits, which can then resonate with how we navigate the world. How can we teach students that their perspectives are taken seriously, and their voices are being heard?

Taiko as Advocacy

My background is in psychology, which I chose to study because I've always had an interest in people and what motivates them—why people are the way that they are. This has driven me to do different forms of activism work throughout my life. For a long time it was primarily around women's rights, and so when I discovered taiko I thought a lot about empowerment and representation of women performers. I was very passionate about how taiko could break down stereotypes around what Asian-American women look or act like when these women expressed confidence through their playing. But my view has changed over the years as I encountered all types of expression by all types of people. It doesn’t always have to be about portraying strength and power; there can be grace, sensitivity, humor, or depth to taiko, expressed differently by players of all genders and backgrounds.

So I chose to focus on self-advocacy rather than empowerment to encapsulate this shift in my thinking. Rather than emphasizing taiko as a form of empowering groups of underrepresented communities, the nuance of advocacy is in allowing people to explore a range of expression and representation, both on the outside and the inside. We should find opportunities to allow our students to explore what type of voice or spirit they want to embody through taiko, rather than create an environment where we instill any one form of expression that students come to associate with taiko.

Here I will focus on advocacy as a tool for teaching taiko, rather than as a skill for performance. I think self-advocacy can be conveyed in both the performance side and the teaching side of taiko, but I want to focus on the teaching side here because most of the time we spend with taiko is not in performance. It’s the time we spend regularly in rehearsals and classes where we have a great opportunity to shape what our students take away from our time together, even beyond their practice of taiko. Students should understand that every one of them is important in the ensemble, that they should have a voice, and that they have space to ask for help or express something that they need. Particularly during times of social and political unrest in our country, I think that we as teachers can be thinking about what we can do in our taiko classrooms that can help what’s going on in our students’ worlds—making space for students to express themselves and navigate how they are feeling.

PJ Hirabayashi has this great quote that I use frequently: “play taiko not to impress, but to inspire.” But recently I started thinking, what if the goal to “inspire” was instead left open-ended? “Play taiko not to impress, but to…”? Maybe that “...” can vary between individuals, and change over the course of their time with taiko. I’d like to think about how we as teachers can help our students discover their “why” through taiko. 

Applications to the Classroom

These are some of the ways I’ve found to apply this idea of advocacy to my taiko classes. In sharing these, I hope they might inspire you to think about how you might begin incorporating ideas of advocacy into your own teaching.

Advocacy as a method of feedback sharing

As teachers, one of the central ways we communicate with our students is through those moments of feedback in which we critique their playing to help them improve. The idea of advocacy can come into play in these moments when we offer intentional feedback based on a student’s individual path. Each of our students has their own strengths and is on their own trajectory with taiko. As you get to know your students, you can start to tailor expectations to each of them individually, aiming high to expect a lot from each of them and then helping them find ways to improve that are challenging yet achievable for them individually. I’ll often tell students when giving them this feedback “I'm only giving you these notes because I know you will get there. Maybe not today. But this is where I think we can get to.”

This method of feedback sharing can also be used to help students relate to one another—as a way to help students recognize each other and become involved in each others’ growth and improvement. When working with younger kids, such communication might take the form of students giving each other compliments and pointing out positive things the other has done, like, "I loved how you were smiling the whole time," or "Your arm was really straight." With older kids and adults, the focus might shift towards self-reflection about the group’s performance. Sometimes, I even ask them to make a list of three things they thought went well and three things they want the group to practice and improve on that week, and allow this to structure our practice time together. In our performance training program, we also do video critiques to help individuals develop a critical eye for both their own growth as well as that of the other members of the group. It can be hard for some people to give critiques to one another, but the goal is to create a space where feedback isn't seen as a bad thing. Rather, constructive comments should be seen as a gift to one another as a way to help each other grow on our journeys with taiko. It takes time and trust to build this environment, but it will happen gradually the more you foster this environment of supportive feedback sharing.

Teaching self-advocacy in a group setting

If you're in a group that performs a lot, sometimes you have to put your own motivations aside when you're performing. Taiko can be a really powerful form of expression, but if you're only focused on expressing yourself as part of a group, you can start to lose your identity as an individual. As teachers, we can help students discover opportunities to find spaces to express themselves individually in this group setting; sometimes this might take the form of a taiko solo, but there are many ways students can bring themselves to a taiko group beyond just playing. Perhaps it’s volunteering to make posters, or managing equipment, or helping teach a class. Everyone has unique talents they can contribute to our taiko communities, and by helping students identify somewhere to put that expression and energy, we can help them overcome any feelings that their voices may not be heard within the group.

It's also important to create an environment where people feel they can talk to you—the group leader—about their feelings and trajectory as part of your group. Our students may go through times when they are really enjoying their time with taiko, but they can also go through hard times too when taiko can no longer feel fun for any number of reasons. It’s on us as teachers to create the environment in which these conversations are welcomed and solicited. I strive to make space for my students to understand that it's not always going to be fun, and that it’s okay for them to say that they're struggling. In my teen class, we do check-ins a few times a year where I talk to them one-on-one, asking how they're doing and if they're still getting what they want out of the class. Sometimes they need to tell me something they haven't been able to before, like they've been in a bad mood because of a math test they have before class every week. Or, a kid who I thought wasn't enjoying taiko at all might tell me they love it and look forward to it every week. Those individual conversations, whether formal or informal, are really good to have.

Identifying your own “why”

One of the core principles we teach at San Jose Taiko is attitude, and whenever we do school performances I usually describe this as boiling down to the concept of respect. Respect is often described as being for spaces, fellow players, teachers, history, the art form, and the taiko instrument itself. But I started to feel like something was missing from this characterization. You can have respect for everything around you but not respect yourself.

So recently I've been trying to put respect for the self at the front of mind in my teaching and playing. For me, this means respecting my own personal "why" for my journey with taiko, and allowing it to help me find new motivations and goals for my classes. Being in tune with your “why” can also help you recognize that everyone else’s “why” will necessarily be unique, and students will come to the classroom learning at different paces with different motivations and backgrounds. Instead of a classroom focused on performances and outcomes, this helps shift the tone of the class towards self-acceptance and mutual understanding.

Mark H Rooney  - "the world's most dangerous half-Japanese, half-Scottish solo improvisational taiko artist" - has been studying, teaching and performing taiko for 26 years. Traveling far and wide to both study and teach, Mark has led workshops on various styles of taiko at NATC (North American Taiko Conference), ECTC (East Coast Taiko Conference), ETC (European Taiko Conference) and TTF (Toronto Taiko Festival). He has also worked with dozens of groups, both collegiate and community, specializing in kumidaiko and healthy group culture. In both Boston and the DC area, Mark has taught thousands of students in his various classes and workshops, always working toward the mission, "taiko for all people at all levels".

Ever since starting taiko drumming at the age of 25, I fell in love with the shared drumming experience we call kumi-daiko. It spoke of course to my own heritage being half-Japanese, and also to my experiences with other kinds of performance throughout my life. But what made me most excited about taiko was the idea of sharing it with other people. So very early on in my taiko career, I dedicated myself to learning how to teach it.

Through my various experiences teaching and studying taiko in Japan and in the United States, I’ve come up with my 11-step program for good taiko practice. I’ve developed this method through a lot of trial and error over the years, and through numerous conversations with many amazing taiko pedagogues as well as teachers of other disciplines. This is by no means the only method, but it’s been a consistent one and one that I’ve found a lot of success with. I’m sharing this method with you all in hopes that you find any of it applicable to your own taiko curriculum.

But first! A few guiding principles

Before diving into the method, I think it’s important to lay out the central philosophy behind it. These are the principles that guide my teaching and that I hope to pass on to others through this framework.

3 types of connection

Kumi-daiko, as a shared drumming experience, is all about connection. This philosophy of connection is embedded throughout my teaching approach, which I tend to break down into 3 interrelated types:

1. Connection to the drum: Playing taiko involves exploring our connection to the drum—how it sounds, how it wants to be played, even the physics and physical relation to the taiko. Through this exploration we're also connecting to ourselves. It’s about understanding your body and movement in context with the drum. For some, it can even be a sort of spiritual connection between yourself and the taiko. It’s a very personal connection that each of us has whenever we approach a drum.

2. Connection to each other: This type of connection is embedded in the very idea of kumi-daiko. By drumming as an ensemble, we are inherently connecting to each other as people and taiko players. 

3. Connection to a witness: When we think about performing taiko, we typically strive to connect with an audience in sharing the art of taiko outside of the classroom. But these connections can extend beyond the typical audience to unexpected witnesses, from the person who happens to walk by your studio during a practice, to your neighbors (who may not always enjoy the connection they have to your playing). It can be any act of observation in which a third party begins to connect with you, the taiko drum, and the art of taiko practice.

As I developed in my practice of taiko, I increasingly started to explore these 3 ways that we connect. I also started to gain a deep appreciation for this connectivity within the Japanese language: this triality of koko (here), soko (there), and asoko (over there) is what we mean when we think about first-, second-, and third-person relationships. I believe that taiko is an exploration of these connections, so naturally I wanted to embed this philosophy into my teaching practice as well.

Teaching taiko through cultural context

As teachers, we have a responsibility to be informed and intentional about how we situate taiko as a Japanese cultural practice in the classroom. I believe this cultural context is just as important as considering what drills or approaches to song study we use, even though the latter is typically what we tend to emphasize when we think about classroom design. Choices such as how we open and close a class, what terminology we use to describe concepts to students, and the pedagogical tools we use: all of these play a role in helping to ensure taiko retains its Japanese roots as we continue to advance the art of taiko in Western cultural contexts. Emphasizing the transmission of taiko through kuchi shōga over Western notation is one such choice many of us make in our classrooms. Japanese practices and philosophies are woven throughout my teaching method, which I’ll try to emphasize in my explanations below.

Goal-based learning

For effective classroom design, it’s important to identify goals. Goals operate on many layers: longer-term goals for a series of classes trickle down into the goals for a specific class, and then into the goals for a specific drill or exercise. The method I lay out below is intentionally very high-level so that it can be applied to different situations. But to fill in the details of every class you’ll first want to identify these different goals as a way of orienting your teaching at the different moments I lay out in this method. 

I want to emphasize that these should be your goals, not your students’ goals. I believe students should adapt and meet you where you want them to be based on the goals you’ve outlined and communicated for the class. It’s impossible to meet everyone else’s goals, and besides that attempting to do so will lead to a less focused classroom overall. However, you should consider your students’ motivations for taking the class when designing these goals. The goals you design for a recreational class are going to be different from the goals for a community group or a performance training class.

11 steps to any taiko class

With these principles in mind, let’s dive into the 11 steps I follow in any taiko class.

1. Aisatsu
   We greet each other and acknowledge that what we’re about to do is not done alone. A central philosophy for me in taiko, which is shared in Japanese culture more broadly, is respect. Often at the beginning of class, we talk about respect for the space, for the taiko that we play on, for our teachers, for each other, and for ourselves. Acknowledging these different areas of respect as central to the taiko we practice  ensures that we are intentional in how we interact with each other and our surroundings every time we come to class. It can also be used as a general guide in connection with the world around us.

2. Mokuso
   We meditate to focus on being present in the space. Establishing presence is an effective way to maximize the limited time you have together. I’ve applied this practice of meditation from the influence of my grandfather, who was a kendo and iaidō teacher in Japan. At the beginning and end of every class, his groups participated in this moment of silent meditation to bring everyone’s focus into the space and practice. I hope to carry on that practice in the taiko community as well.

3. Establishing goals
   I then lay out the goals of the specific practice. This helps create a signpost for whether or not we accomplished what we’ve set out to do that day. Rather than a goal like “we are going to get better at taiko today,” establish more concrete and actionable goals, like cleaning up a specific section of a piece, or working on applying a specific principle to a drill students have been working on.

4. Taiso
   I guide the group through a full body warmup and stretching routine. This helps players check in with their body, which is as much a part of the instrument they play as the taiko itself..

5. Kihon
   This period of the class is all about exploring the connection to the taiko that I described above. No matter how advanced a player is, checking in on fundamentals is important for everyone’s continual progress. Typically this takes the form of either an uchikomi or drill exercise designed to focus on kata, endurance, or basic striking techniques. Students will get accustomed to what it’s like for them to connect with the drum on that given day.

6. Kumi-daiko
   Here we explore the second type of connection I described: the connection to each other. We start to explore a “duality of awareness”—both what one is doing themselves as well as its context within the larger group. I like to incorporate what I call “feedback loops” into this space. These are moments when I have students observe each other and let each other know what they’re doing well, as well as offer recommended tips on areas for improvement. I find that this helps students develop a critical eye for their own playing, as it becomes necessary for them to give feedback to others. I also find that it enhances students’ trust in each other in learning to accept feedback from a place of gratitude.

7. Song study
   Finally, we explore the third type of connection by refining our outward expression to an audience or other observer. Typically this manifests as song study, either learning a new part of a piece or honing in on an established one. We connect to others outside the studio through the repertoire we play, so this time is used for students to learn how we want to convey ourselves through this form of outward expression through song. And of course, we fall into a “triality of awareness”—what we are doing, its context in the larger group and how it’s perceived by an outside party.

8. Mokuso
   In our closing meditation, I have students reflect on the practice. I want students to explore for themselves what they noticed during the practice, what they took away, and any questions that came up for them that they want to explore further in the next class.

9. Gratitude
   We then express our gratitude to each other, showing respect for the time we spent together, the work we did, the taiko we played, and the energy shared.

10. Discussion and Logistics
    At this point, I like to hear students’ take-ways and observations from the class. What did they notice about their own playing, what improvements did they see, or what challenged them today? Sometimes, I prompt them with a question about their experience. Before ending, I typically make space for general announcements and discussion of upcoming events.

11. Soji
    Finally, we all participate in cleaning up our studio space before leaving. Again, this is about instilling a sense of respect and responsibility for the space we learn and play in.

Conclusion

It’s my hope that this framework will help you feel confident in approaching your taiko classrooms, and that some of these guiding principles of connection and cultural context will resonate with some of you. There’s of course a lot of nuance that goes into designing the details of any class, from drill design, to creating an approachable learning environment, and even bringing your own flair into the classroom. If I might offer one final piece of advice to my fellow taiko pedagogues, it would be to always be learning. Strive to become a student of teaching by observing other taiko pedagogues and talking to teachers you admire. Always seek to progress your skill alongside your students, and learn from them by taking in their feedback during your classes. Recognize the limits of your expertise, and bring in an expert to fill in any gaps and progress your own knowledge. This advancement will only enhance your creativity in teaching through this or any other method.