Asakusa’s Drum Museum
May 9th, 2008 by Ian PriestlyPhotos:Mark A Buckton
It is the interactive nature of the Drum Museum that makes it well worth the 300 yen entrance fee.
Exhibits are labelled with a blue or red sticker. Blue means you can have a go yourself and you will find there’s something very therapeutic about this! The museum aims to underline the role played by the drum in different cultures, and we have drums from Asia, Africa and Europe.
The section dealing with Japanese drums tells us something about the varied uses of the instrument in Japan. Some of these uses are religious, like the Mokugyo, used to accompany Buddhist sutra chanting, others, like the Chingdon Daiko,
are not—this drum was used as a means of attracting customers to newly opened shops or pachinko parlors.
Other uses of drums are delightfully obscure.
The Yokyu Daiko is traditionally used in archery contests, where it stands behind the target. If the archer misses, the arrow hits the drum, making it, one suspects, not the most popular instrument among archers. There are English descriptions with the exhibits.
