Curtis Patterson (an American koto player)

Amazed by the reality that our everyday life is in surrounding of 'history' that has lasted for hundreds of years.

　Curtis has been playing piano since his childhood, and is now extremely busy traveling throughout Japan day after day as a koto player. What brought him to get to know the koto?
"I got immersed in it when a teacher, who was fond of jazz music, came to me with koto and taught me how to play. I certainly loved music, but never imagined to earn my living with it. A life is really wondrous...," he laughed.

The koto instrument boosted his curiosity about this country, Japan, while an opportunity came to him for his first visit to Japan. He did not have any concrete image about this country before arriving, according to him, but began to experience here endless series of surprises.
"What a crowd of people lives efficiently packed on this small island. I am saying it, not ironically, but, to the contrary, what is the waste of land in the manner Americans do there. It's exciting when I found 'history' existed in everyday's routine living."

The history of Chicago, where Curtis was born and brought up, is only as old as a hundred or, at best, one and a half hundred years. There might have been vast, borderless grassland all over there only till two hundred years ago. In Japan, there are shrines and temples here and there which are hundreds of years old easily. "Old stone statues are sitting at the corner of streets just like anything ordinary. That's nothing special. It was a surprise to me, the same way as trains were running so punctually," he said laughingly.

The potential of koto sought through brushing up basic skills of koto play

In those days after his return to USA, while working on his job, he could not help reminiscing memories of koto and Japan, and decided to participate in the JET program (Japan Exchange and Teaching Program) for the ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) as a visiting English teacher at a high school in Tochigi prefecture. During this period of his stay in Tochigi, he studied the jiuta, which was fundamental to the Ikuta-style koto play, and deepened understanding about the classic art of koto. "It was really a period of my study. I moved later my residence to Kyoto at an invitation of a friend of my college days, and was introduced to a student of great Tadao Sawai."

During his 'Kyoto Days', he learned of koto as a player in a big group like a symphony orchestra, and other aspects of koto unknown to him till that time. "Koto had been so attractive to me in its classic performance, but great Sawai taught that way of highly liberal fashion of koto play as a new finding to me. In those days in Tochigi, I found the charm of classic koto, and, in Kyoto, I came across its modern facet and sought its potential. I then moved to Tokyo for the guidance of Mr. Sawai at the Sawai Koto Institute

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Extremely delicate koto producing changing tones to the mood of the day

　"I enjoy both teaching how to play koto, and playing it for myself. Teaching is, at the same time, learning from it. Because answering a basic question like 'Why should it be played this way?', for example, I can review it theoretically."

　For learning koto play, it would be ideal to begin practicing in childhood regularly every week, but, in reality, they can not do so often. "I would try to help them make good for the days they had to stay away from practicing koto in the past," he mentioned, when talking about people who can only afford to find time to learn it when grown up.

　Styles of playing can be different from each other, as an individual has a size and a shape of a hand or fingers different from others. This will explain why he said, "I would first take a look of a person's fingers."
"Koto is a simple-looking instrument with strings that are strung over a piece of paulownia. Pressing down a string and sliding the position of a finger, different tones are produced. I was, in the past, seriously attempting to get to 'Japanese tones', so to say, but I have realized now 'what are my own tones.' It is so delicate an instrument to produce tones which can be influenced by the physical condition and mood, or sensitivity of the player on the day to play it. Such complexity has kept me on this instrument all along until now."

Feeling at ease with the Japanese word 'En' that has no translation in English

He said, "I want to continue what I am doing now. I will also stage my performances and conduct classes more actively so that more people get aware of the beautiful koto." He is busy for now with a shakuhachi player, Bruce Huebner, on live shows, but will embark on the activities of composing his original pieces at the same time.

　Concluding the interview, we asked him what the Japanese culture meant to him.
"You have a word 'En' in Japanese. I think it is firmly rooted in the mind of Japanese people, though unconsciously. Americans don't have such a notion, but I have naturally taken it for granted since I settled down in Japan. Having experienced accidental encounters repeatedly, I feel now 'something' existing in another space directing me at where I live a life."

He described he was feeling at ease with the Japanese word 'En', meaning a series of causes and conditions, which contained different implications from words like 'Destiny' or 'Predestine' in English.

■ Basic knowledge about Koto
The Koto is an instrument with 13 strings plucked with finger picks, which look differently each other in the Ikuta-style squarish tips or the Yamada-style rounded tips, and others. Other kinds of difference are also noticeable in performance postures; Yamada players sit slightly squarely facing the koto, while the Ikuta players sit at an angle.