Let’s try Japanese art & live performance !

The number of foreign tourists visiting Japan continues to increase rapidly. The top three things that tourists expect before visiting Japan are: 68.3% of Japanese food, 53.4% of shopping, 45.4% of nature and scenic spots tourism, which are exactly following the mass media coverage. However, once they visit Japan and experience them, it turned out that the ratio numbers go down to the half.

On the other hand, although visibility is low before visiting Japan, more people would like to experience the following cultural and artistic activities again in the future after they experience them in Japan. (Tourism Agency Survey announced in 2018.)

For the past few years, Arts Council Tokyo has been offering traditional culture experience programs ”Japanese dance” and “Nagauta” at Asakusa Culture Tourist Information Center, “Engei” at Edo-Tokyo Museum and Shishimai at Haneda Airport International Terminal for foreign tourists for about one day per week for free, and the performances are really appreciated by many foreigners.

However, when people plan a trip to Japan, the expectations for traditional culture are still quite low. The reason of it would be that the charm and information of Japanese art is not well known yet. In order to change this situation, it is necessary to enrich the information on the Internet in addition to providing foreign language information about performing arts and traditional culture experience to tourists for guidebooks around the world. And it is essential to carry out experiencing programs regularly and continuously in Japan and to expand foreign language support.

The experience program of Arts Council Tokyo covers the main part in a short time, but, while aiming to establish a slightly deeper experience in the private sector, an experiment of paid commercializing was conducted as "Kabuki music experience in English" in 2017. It is a program to experience the essence of Nagauta composed of Shamisen and Ohayashi (traditional flute (fue) and percussions (Kotsuzumi, Ootsuzumi and Taiko)), which are essential for Kabuki music. Participants touch those instruments for the first time and try to play a short melody. In closing, they listen to the professional performance more carefully, and everyone gets excited a lot. "Next, I want to learn more about the history and those musical instruments." many of them say.

Tokyo Art & Live City plans to hold a Japanese traditional dance program for beginners from October 24th to 28th. Details will be available on the WEB site around August.