Renowned Japanese drumming ensemble Tao returns to Taiwan tonight and tomorrow with its own “brand of global entertainment” at Taipei Arena. The group, whose name in Chinese means “the way” or “the path,” has wowed audiences worldwide with epic performances that combine martial arts athleticism and waidaiko, or traditional Japanese drumming.
Since its breakthrough performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2004, Tao has gained a strong following in Europe, where the group recently completed a four-month tour.
The group’s members were pleasantly surprised last year by the “power and reaction” they received from a 2,000-strong audience in Taipei, said the group’s producer, Ikuo Fujitaka, in a phone interview with the Taipei Times just after arriving at Taoyuan International Airport.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TAIA
“In Japan, people are very shy, and we expected a similar reaction in Taiwan [in comparison to European and American audiences],” said Fujitaka, speaking through his interpreter and Tao’s marketing manager Emma Sato.
Among Japanese wadaiko groups, Tao is considered an innovator for bringing a modern touch to its shows. The group incorporates elements of Western-style musicals in its music, which is adorned with a wide range of sounds, including bamboo flutes, the Japanese harp and marimba.
The group says its inspiration comes from Broadway and Las Vegas productions. Throughout their two-hour show, Tao’s drummers dance, spin, and jump across the stage — all the while playing a large drum strapped over their shoulders. The tight, synchronized choreography is enhanced by an elaborate stage design, lighting and special effects.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TAIA
But behind the style and flair, Tao takes a strict, traditional approach to training. The drummers live together in a near-monastic existence in their mountainous home of Kuju in Kyushu’s Oita Prefecture. Their training emphasizes both physical and mental discipline: the group members start mornings with a 15km run, followed by two hours of physical training and then 10 hours of wadaiko practice.
The rigorous training in Kuju is the ultimate test for the world stage as Tao masters believe that the local residents must be satisfied with the trainees’ performances before they can be taken on the road, the group said in a press release. Kuju is also the inspiration for the themes of nature that feature in Tao’s shows.
Fujitaka said the group is excited about returning to the Taipei Arena, which is one of the biggest venues it has ever performed in as a headlining act. This weekend’s show will make full use of the arena, with a more spectacular stage setup than last year’s, he said.
And Taipei audiences will see Tao performing all new pieces, honed on tour in Europe and North America. “We want to make an even deeper impression than last time,” Fujitaka said.
From a nadir following the 2020 national elections, two successive chairs of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) and Eric Chu (朱立倫), tried to reform and reinvigorate the old-fashioned Leninist-structured party to revive their fortunes electorally. As examined in “Donovan’s Deep Dives: How Eric Chu revived the KMT,” Chu in particular made some savvy moves that made the party viable electorally again, if not to their full powerhouse status prior to the 2014 Sunflower movement. However, while Chu has made some progress, there remain two truly enormous problems facing the KMT: the party is in financial ruin and
Over the years, whole libraries of pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) texts have been issued by commentators on “the Taiwan problem,” or the PRC’s desire to annex Taiwan. These documents have a number of features in common. They isolate Taiwan from other areas and issues of PRC expansion. They blame Taiwan’s rhetoric or behavior for PRC actions, particularly pro-Taiwan leadership and behavior. They present the brutal authoritarian state across the Taiwan Strait as conciliatory and rational. Even their historical frames are PRC propaganda. All of this, and more, colors the latest “analysis” and recommendations from the International Crisis Group, “The Widening
Sept. 30 to Oct. 6 Chang Hsing-hsien (張星賢) had reached a breaking point after a lifetime of discrimination under Japanese rule. The talented track athlete had just been turned down for Team Japan to compete at the 1930 Far Eastern Championship Games despite a stellar performance at the tryouts. Instead, he found himself working long hours at Taiwan’s Railway Department for less pay than the Japanese employees, leaving him with little time and money to train. “My fighting spirit finally exploded,” Chang writes in his memoir, My Life in Sports (我的體育生活). “I vowed then to defeat all the Japanese in Taiwan
About 130 years ago — as New Zealand women celebrated their world-first right to vote, athletes competed in the first international Olympic Games, and the first motion pictures were flickering into view — a tiny mottled green reptile with a spiny back was hatching on a small New Zealand island. The baby tuatara — a unique and rare reptile endemic to New Zealand — emerged from his burrow into the forest floor, where he miraculously evaded birds, rats and cannibalistic adult tuatara to reach his full adult size — nearly one kilo in weight and half a meter in length —