Irishman keeps biwa alive

Thomas Charles Marshall

Photos by Daily Yomiuri Photographer Makoto Miyazaki

By Ayako Hirayama

Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

FUJIOKA, Gunma--Thomas Charles Marshall lives for today, not tomorrow. About 15 years ago, the Irishman had a bright future as an organist. At age 10, he won a scholarship to the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and at 18 became an organ scholar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he played the pipe organ for members of the British royal family. As his next step, the prodigy planned to go to the Netherlands to study further.

But his promising future was cut short by a hand injury. It came on slowly, Marshall said, and eventually he was unable to play. He was at a loss.

"I was very, very disappointed," the 34-year-old Marshall recalled. "I was going to carry on, but obviously providence had different plans for me. It was very tough."

"Ever since I got my hand injured, I've never thought what's going to happen tomorrow. I just live for today," he added.

Marshall did not intend to look for an alternative instrument, but the injury opened the door to ethnic music for him. At first, he became interested in Arabic music, but his focus gradually shifted to Asian music.

He became fascinated with Japanese music when he heard the plaintive notes of the shakuhachi. However, the biwa did not impress him at first. But from this inauspicious beginning, the pear-shaped lute has become his abiding passion.

"Of all the Japanese music I heard before coming to Japan, the biwa was the most difficult to comprehend and assimilate," he said, adding that the first biwa player he heard left him with an image of the "latent power of natural phenomenon, wind, water and sudden bursts of energy and violence."

With his interest in Japanese traditional music growing, he took an opportunity to join the Japanese Society in Cambridge, a social club at the university. However, his effort to improve his understanding of the music ended in failure, as he came to realize many Japanese he met there did not know much about their own ethnic music. So he gradually lost interest in coming to Japan.

As he neared graduation, Marshall looked for a job and applied for vacancies in business. But he was only told, "You're better as a musician."

Growing up in a musical family in Portlaoise, County Laoighis, he began learning the piano at age 3. His repertoire then expanded to other instruments, including the flute and pipe organ. At Cambridge, he trained and conducted a choir for the college chapel.

His interest in coming to Japan revived when he learned about the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program. But his relocation to this country was whimsical. To fill in a placement-request form, he opened a map of Japan, closed his eyes and dropped his finger on it. It landed in Gunma Prefecture. After changing the angle of the map, he repeated the action, and again his finger rested on the prefecture.

In 1994, Marshall was sent to a Gunma town--as he requested--where he taught children English for three years. During his first days in Japan, he tried calligraphy and painting--something other than music.

But a meeting with players of Japanese traditional instruments drew him back into the music world. Once again, his life became full of music by learning the shakuhachi, the biwa as well as the koto. His koto teacher later became his wife, and the couple continue to live in Gunma Prefecture.

Marshall said that of all Japanese instruments the biwa suited him best. In December 1994, he met Yoshinori Fumon, a master player of the Satsumabiwa, and took lessons from him until he died in 2003 at 92.

The four-string Satsumabiwa was originally intended for samurai of the Satsuma domain, now Kagoshima Prefecture, to refine their spirits. Its characteristic large fan-like plectrum was said to have served as a weapon at times. As he became more involved in the musical field, he said he learned that only a few people play the instrument in the traditional style today.

"Something inside me told me not to let it go to waste," he said. "So, I decided to try to do it properly."

But acquiring skills in playing the biwa in the traditional manner was no easy task as his mentor's teaching methods relied more heavily on oral and aural traditions.

"We played the same piece together, and he improvised. So I would have to know what was going to come next by instinct," he said.

After years of intensive training, Marshall was given the name, "Ranjo," in 1998, when he was considered to have mastered the instrument. Currently, he teaches the biwa in Gunma Prefecture and Tokyo, while building a career as a performer.

"He's usually soft-spoken and polite, but when it comes to the biwa, he becomes a strict teacher," student Jun Yamaguchi said of Marshall.

Yasuo Morizono, head of the Seiden Orthodox Satsuma Biwa Fumon School, praised Marshall's focus on traditional aspects of the biwa.

"Honestly speaking, I didn't think he could master the biwa," Morizono said. "But he's talented and became skilled quickly. On top of that, I admire his attitude toward the biwa. He studies the history of the biwa and usually wears a kimono. He always tries to play it in an appropriate way."

The 78-year-old veteran biwa player said people like Marshall are essential to passing down the biwa's tradition, as he is concerned that the instrument has increasingly been used merely for entertainment and its original aspect as a tool for self-development has become less important.

Likewise, Marshall cares about the future of the biwa--while he says he does not think about his own future. "I just want to keep the tradition alive as a teacher and as a performer. I want to make people become more aware of how good the instrument is," he said.

When asked about his future goal he added, "That would be enough for me."