When I started learning koto <\/i>back in September, it was a musical experience like I\u2019ve never had. From the beginning, I considered the presence of both \u201cuchi<\/i>\u201d and \u201csoto<\/i>\u201d within that world. Is the student in the sphere of \u201cuchi<\/i>?\u201d Or maybe \u201csoto<\/i>?\u201d As it turns out, it\u2019s not black and white \u2013 both are valid, though I think one is more appropriate to my particular situation that the other.<\/p>\n
In America, I have taken clarinet, piano, and guitar lessons, among others, and they were all done in local music studios. This kind of lesson is certainly a \u201csoto<\/i>\u201d experience. I would go to a school-like building with individual classrooms, take my lessons in the room that my teacher is renting, and leave that room when my lesson is over. On top of that, because my teachers were borrowing those rooms from the music studio owners, doesn\u2019t that mean that my teachers were also in a \u201csoto<\/i>\u201d sphere within that space? You can hardly call that an emotionally close experience. However, my koto <\/i>lessons here in Kyoto are taught at my teacher\u2019s, Noda-sensei\u2019s, own home. Considering that, I had to consider whether this was an \u201cuchi<\/i>\u201d or \u201csoto<\/i>\u201d world, in comparison to the clearly \u201csoto<\/i>\u201d world of my previous lessons. If I were to say \u201csoto<\/i>,\u201d there are certain formal and polite interactions to consider. For instance, when my teacher is talking to me, not only about her other students and acquaintances, she uses the Kansai-ben<\/i> word \u201ciharu<\/i>.\u201d I wondered why on earth she would use keigo <\/i>with me, her considerably younger student. Through using this language, though she uses it out of kindness, it\u2019s as though my teacher is carefully handling our teacher-student relationship to keep a social barrier between us.<\/p>\n
Though I say that, I find the argument that this situation is \u201cuchi<\/i>\u201d more compelling. Because my lessons are done in my teacher\u2019s home, there are also plenty of experiences that aren\u2019t \u201csoto<\/i>.\u201d For example, because I\u2019m going into someone\u2019s house, I have to use the appropriate greetings, and sometimes I meet members of my teacher\u2019s family by coincidence. I was recently talking to my teacher about the coming of spring, and I asked if she was planning on going to a hanami<\/i>. She responded that although she wasn\u2019t planning to go, since she dislikes the bugs that live in the sakura <\/i>and the crowds that accompany a hanami <\/i>experience, she can enjoy the ume<\/i> in her own backyard garden, and opened the shoji<\/i> separating the classroom and the living area so that I could see through to the ume <\/i>outside. If I had been taking these lessons in a music studio, there\u2019s no way I could have had this experience.<\/p>\n
On top of that, lessons aren\u2019t the only thing I receive from my teacher. She lends me a koto <\/i>for free so that I can practice on my own at my host family\u2019s house, and so that I don\u2019t have to spend money on my own music, she lets me borrow her own sheet music to copy at school for a fraction of the cost. In addition to that, because I am doing my independent study on the tegotomono<\/i> genre of koto <\/i>music, my teacher has given me various things in preparation for that project. For instance, because she works as a koto <\/i>performer in addition to teaching lessons, she gave me three CDs of tegotomono <\/i>music that she recorded to use as sources \u2013 all for free! These kinds of experiences where I receive all these things from my teacher are certainly \u201cuchi<\/i>.\u201d That is to say, all of the above-mentioned freebies that I received would normally be paid for, and would be a \u201csoto<\/i>\u201d relationship, right? But Noda-sensei<\/i> is not only my teacher, but also my mentor, and as such she helps in any way she can to make my experience a good one, which convinces me that this is more of an \u201cuchi<\/i>\u201d relationship than a \u201csoto<\/i>\u201d one.<\/p>\n
Of course, you could reasonably say it\u2019s \u201csoto<\/i>\u201d <\/i>or \u201cuchi<\/i>\u201d \u2013 it all depends on what specific experiences you consider to be more telling. However, I have found that my relationship with Noda-sensei<\/i> is more meaningful than the relationships I have had with previous private lesson instructors, and so I consider it to be \u201cuchi<\/i>.\u201d If I were to take lessons again when I return to America, I have to wonder if I\u2019ll pay attention to these same kinds of interactions more than before I took my koto <\/i>lessons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I started learning koto back in September, it was a musical experience like I\u2019ve never had. From the begi … \u7d9a\u304d\u3092\u8aad\u3080