The lecture "Taiko and the Rhythms of Postwar Japan" will begin at 5 p.m. Sept. 27 in 331 Social Sciences & Business Building at UMSL. The event is free and open to the public. (Photo by Jesús Mena Quintana via Wikimedia Commons)
It wasn’t until the end of World War II that Japanese taiko drumming really took off. Fast-forward to the present day and taiko drumming is very popular, not only in Japan, but on the international stage.
The emergence and popularization of taiko will be the focus of a lecture at the University of Missouri–St. Louis by Shawn Bender, assistant professor of East Asian Studies at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa.
“Taiko and the Rhythms of Postwar Japan” will begin at 5 p.m. Sept. 27 in 331 Social Sciences & Business Building at UMSL. The event is free and open to the public.
Bender has been doing anthropological fieldwork with taiko drumming groups since the late 1990s. He is the author of “Taiko Boom: Japanese Drumming in Place and Motion.”
The lecture is sponsored by the Ei’ichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Professorship in Japanese Studies at UMSL, International Studies and Programs at UMSL, the Japan America Society and the Japan Studies Alliance.
