As a music education major, I knew as soon as I heard about the community Involvement Project that I wanted to learn a traditional Japanese instrument. The quarter before I came to Japan, I took a class on Asian pop music and was introduced to a duo called the Yoshida Kyoudai, brothers from Northern Japan who play a three-stringed banjo-like instrument called the shamisen. I became entranced with their music and decided I would try and learn the shamisen as well.
Having learned many other instruments before, I expected it to be pretty easy, but it came with its own challenges. Finding the individual pitches was not very hard, but I found the bachi (pick) extremely difficult to use. I worried so much about it that my wrist would get tense and keep me from being able to play properly. My teacher, a very motherly older woman, would tell me to relax, repeatedly. It was something I had heard from teachers before, but it had a different meaning with her. While other teachers had told me to relax so I could play correctly, she would tell me to relax because to her, the emotion behind a piece was so much more important than whether or not each individual note was correct, so it wasn’t worth it to stress over playing perfectly.
In her I also noticed an interesting change of personality during and after lessons that I hope to emulate one day with my students. During my lessons, she would rarely praise me (unless I was extra worried that day and she felt the need to reassure me that I was doing fine) and was very business-like, only saying what she had to to get her point across. However, after my lessons, she would chat away without hesitation, discussing everything from music to the intimate details of her life as if we were old friends. At times she surprised me with how much she felt comfortable sharing not only about herself, but also about her other students. I think Japan and especially Japanese teachers can come off as having a very serious, businesslike approach to things, but as I’ve learned, that doesn’t necessarily mean that people are unfriendly or don’t want to have a close relationship with you. The philosophy is that during the lesson, the teacher’s job is to teach, not to be friends. However, afterwards, the teacher wants to encourage a positive attitude towards learning and having future lessons, and so will talk as if you’re friends.