Ōkura Shōnosuke: Innovating with Tradition

The pulse emanating from an ōtsuzumi’s cherry wood body and horsehide heads transcends space and time, echoing through the vastness of the cosmos itself.

Ōkura plays the ōtsuzumi at the National Noh Theatre in Tokyo. (© Otome Kaita)

The leather head of the ōtsuzumi, made of horsehide, upper left. Ōkura’s right hand after years of striking the ōtsuzumi, upper right. The carved wooden body of a 650-year-old ōtsuzumi, passed down in the Ōkura school, lower left. The shirabeo laces that hold the drumheads to the body are woven from dyed hemp, lower right. The otsuzumi’s elegant and mystical sound is created by these plain, simple implements.

The kakegoe shouts of an ōtsuzumi drummer are just as important as the beats of the drum in providing a vital rhythmic underpinning for the nō ensemble.

An audience with Pope John Paul II, upper left; performing at the opening event of the Oribe 2003 in NY exhibition at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, upper right; performing with Martha Argerich and company at the Project Martha Argerich music festival in Lugano, Switzerland, lower left (courtesy of Ōkura Shōnosuke). Performing in Jofū: Inside of Wind at the New National Theatre, Tokyo, lower right (© Tsukimori Sana).

“There is still so much I want to do and accomplish,” says Ōkura.