As a senior master performer of biwa (lute), koto, shamisen and jiuta voice, Kyoto, Japan native Yoko Hiraoka has made history come alive in classrooms and in performance venues around the world. At 7 p.m. Friday, April 29, in Kissell Auditorium inside Wittenberg’s Koch Hall, students, faculty and staff will join with students and colleagues at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana as well as online viewers around the world in watching Hiraoka perform selections from The Tale of Heike.
The webcast is being sponsored by Wittenberg and the Illinois Japan Performing Arts Network (IJPAN). The performance will take those in attendance back to the Genpei War (1180-1185) as it celebrates the warriors who gave their lives during this civil war, which scholars call “as traumatic for its times as the Asia-Pacific War was for ours.”
“During the mid-13th and early 14th century, monks, poets, and songsters in Japan began to reflect upon the cataclysmic Genpei War, in which warring military factions and the imperial family became hopelessly lost in a web of politics, throwing the countryside into violent upheaval, and leading to the violent overthrow of the aristocratic political center located in Heian and the establishment of military rule in Kamakura,” explained Tanya Maus, Wittenberg assistant professor of history, who helped to spearhead the collaboration with IJPAN to bring Hiraoka’s performance beyond Wittenberg’s borders.
In addition to classical and modern training in koto and shamisen music, Hiraoka studied Chikuzen five-string Biwa for many years with Kõka Suga, the head of Kõmyõji-ryû Chikuzen Biwa and direct disciple of Yamazaki Kyokusui, honored as a Living National Treasure by the Japanese government. Since moving to the United States, she has performed at the Art Institute of Chicago, Princeton University, Yale University, UCLA, Bowdoin, Smith and Colby Colleges, and many other major universities and music festivals throughout the country. Ms. Hiraoka currently teaches at Naropa University in Boulder, Colo.
