Saturday, March 18, snow @ Ueda, high & °C, low 0 °C

I went to listen to a biwa (Japanese lute) playing the story of Heike Monogatari. It seems that there are many types of biwa, and this time, it was a satsuma-biwa. The biwa is not played horizontally, but vertically, and the plectrum is very large, like a fan spread out, which surprised me.

She rubbed the strings with the plectrum to express the sound of the wind, or hit the belly board hard to create a rhythm. It was really great! She told us the famous stories of [Gion Shojya] and [Danno-ura] as well as [Kurikara-ochi] and [Tomoe], which she chose to tell us about the part of the story related to Yoshinaka Kiso, because the Maruko district of Ueda city is the place where Kiso Yoshinaka raised his army.

The interpreter was Mrs. Sae Ishida. I felt a little strange because her name was the same as mine.