The Shamisen in Japanese Art and Music

Tatsu Aoki, shamisen, with curator Kit Brooks Follow one of Japan’s signature musical instruments, a three-stringed lute called the shamisen, through the many worlds in which it has played a prominent role, from kabuki and puppet theater to the folk music of blind beggar-musicians and the geisha houses of Tokyo’s Yoshiwara district. Explore the transformation in Japanese aesthetics from relaxed and improvisational styles to the more standardized repertoires of later decades by examining woodblock prints, paintings, and photographs, and by listening to three masters of the shamisen perform. Our guides will be curator Kit Brooks, who specializes in prints and paintings of the Edo and Meiji periods, and musician and filmmaker Tatsu Aoki, who was born into a family of geisha managers in Tokyo and learned their shamisen repertoire before moving to the United States to pursue a career in jazz, film, and experimental music. He will be joined from Tokyo by Nobuto Yamanaka, a specialist in the tsugaru sh