Commission: Decennial Concert of Ars Nova, Sweden

First Performance: November 1970 Malmo, Sweden
It was to try every possibility of string instruments that I had in mind when I composed very intensively in those yeas, bringing forth three pieces of string ensemble successively: REFLECTION, a large ensemble made up of 66 performers, ZONE, a medium ensemble of 16 performers, and, as the last of the triad, this EXORCISM to be performed by five strings. As one critic says: Even in an atmosphere of chaotic sounds, the swiftly changing pizzicati to be played in concert remind us of Tsugaru Shamisen and that the composer's cherished ideas or devices were being given shape in quite early years, I should think of this piece as one of the origins of my course and direction which I was to follow.

"MSP" stands for "Molto Sul Ponticello (playing very near the bridge of the bowed-string instrument)", somewhat fricative, grating sound of the violin, which is often heard throughout this piece. When I compose music, I never discriminate between what some people may call "sound" and "noise", or "musical sound" and "non-musical sound". If need be, therefore, I treat the chirping sound of insects, the chopping sound of sea-waves, and the chipping sound of modern flutes as materials no less readily mixed than any other three types of sound. As for the violin, similarly, traditional molto cantabile and more or less edged sul ponticello are quite equally treated, in the present piece as well. And that, it is "molto" sul ponticello I really and especially wanted here.

WAVE was composed at the request of Japanese cellist Tsuyoshi Tstutsumi and realized with his cooperation. I decided to exclude woodwind and brass instruments from the score because I did not want the sound of the cello weakened or overpowered by the orchestra, as it so often is in traditional cello concerti. With my orchestration of the piece, I aimed at a tint of black and white, as in a drawing.

BREATH was dedicated to Michiko Hirayama who lived in Rome. It was first performed by her in Italy in 1974, and subsequently revised in summer 1977. It may be performed in two ways: by a single voice and pre-recorded tape, or by three voices. The words used in this work are drawn in the main from the Japanese traditional play Noh. It has been said that these words are inexplicable; they have their own particular characters, and thus do not lend themselves to translation into another language. They are words used in ancient times for prayer.

Commission: NHK-FM

As the title suggests, I wanted to create shimmering sounds and a coloristic structure created by the whole orchestra playing as one instrument. I also sought to convey the artistry of energy in transition. SAIKYO was honored with an award at the Agency for Cultural Affairs' 1979 Arts Festival and was selected at the 1980 World Music Days in Israel.

The instrumentation of "Catalysis No. 3" is shinobue (bamboo flute), shakuhachi, Noh-flute, all of which are played by one (same) flautist, thirteen-stringed koto, shamisen (three-stringed plucked lute) and percussion. All the musicians, except for the flautist, sometimes use their voices while playing their instruments, which used to be, and still is, quite a natural manner of playing traditional Japanese music. The words uttered in this particular piece are the names of some ancient gods.

The word transmigration in the title stands for the Buddhist idea of samsara, or the endless cycle of death and rebirth to which life in the material world is bound. It is called rinne in Japanese. A certain thing or phenomenon reaches some other place, and is reborn there as another thing or phenomenon. The way the sounds move and undergo changes among the three instruments reminds me of that. That is one of the reasons why I named it under this title, another being that I would like to express such an idea by using the three instruments of shakuhachi, cello and harp. This was composed for Musica Triform Amsterdam, whom I became acquainted with in the Netherlands in 1983, and was performed for the world premiere in Cologne (Germany) in September 1984. It was in 1980's that I came to use Japanese instruments in my works. Though it requires not a little boldness to use Japanese instruments which tend to be unique in their quality and often highly idiosyncratic, I believe they can produce even unimaginable effects depending on the way we use them.

I like violoncello the best of all instruments. Cello is not just a low-voice instrument, its expressions so diverse and so attractive. No other instrument can sound as evocatively, attractively, or uniquely as cello, which is like a human voice in the low to medium-low range, has forceful tension in its high-position, and is blessed with such particular pizzicato sound. I have written sereral pieces for cello in combination with some other instruments, and as for this piece, I started writing it as a kind of draft for my "Violoncello Concerto", which then turned out to be something totally, and both pieces were completed in the same year.

Commission: NHK-FM

Unlike WAVE, composed twelve years earlier, it is intended as a cello concerto, with stronger coloration. It received an award in the 1984 Art Festival of the Agency for Cultural Affairs.

"N" means the late Mr. Takeo Noro, composer. He was five years my senior in the same high school, and taught me the vast possibility of guitar music. He was a self-taught composer of great talent, but, at the age of forty-two, he committed an unfortunate suicide. In the performance of this piece, the guitarist pronounces, "N-O-R-O", and utters the name of the Buddhist temple we sometimes talked about. L. 41 N is the latitude of Aomori Prefecture, in northern Japan, which is the home country of both of us.

Commission: NHK-FM

The title Yugenism is a coinage made up of the Japanese word yugen meaning a mystic beauty with deep suggestiveness, which was used to explain the works in a certain period of painter Kenzo Okada (1902-1982). I was strongly inspired with this word yugenism, and had ever been wishing to build up an orchestral world founded on this title. In 1988, this was realized at NHK's commission, broadcast the premiere by Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Shigenobu Yamaoka over NHK-FM on November 8. After this broadcasting, I improved the beginning and ending parts fairly much.
There may be some different interpretations of yugen among people and also among eras. I did not intend to transport Okada's pictorial world which is said to have created a world of unique abstract expression based on traditional Japanese aesthetic consciousness immediately to the world of sound, but tried to create my own world of sound yugenism with orchestra and completed this piece.

Commission: NHK-FM

It is constructed in such a way as the sounds which are recorded beforehand in the tape and the live performance by two musicians are heard simultaneously. In the tape are recorded various sounds: multiphonically recorded sounds of 17-stringed-koto and cello, along with those of kotsuzumi, of shamisen, and even of something like natural wind. In this way the piece is intended to be a kind of chamber music acoustically, though it is a duet visually. It starts with an image of shinzan yukoku or deep mountains and valleys, and then develops through various courses until it reaches the final part where the 17-stringed-koto player recites a passage from Hojoki (late 12th - early 13th century Japanese essay written by Kamono Chomei), from which the title of this piece is taken.

This work was composed at the request of Kazuko Takada and dedicated to her, who gave the first performance. Generally speaking, Japanese musical instruments each have distinctive characters. Even among them, the san-gen stands out. The sound of the san-gen makes a strong impression on me as if it expressed the whole world by only one note. In the performance practice of Japanese traditional music, it is not very unique but usual to play musical instruments with voice. This is reflected into my work. The following text from Noh Funabenkei is sung: "Toho ni Gohzanze-myooh, nampo ni Gundari-yasha, saiho ni Daiitoku-myooh, hoppo ni Kongo-yasha, chuo ni Daisho-hudo-myooh". This is a prayer to guardian deities of the all directions, but I put the emphasis on the sounds of the syllables rather than the meaning.

Commission: NHK-FM

KEYKYO is constructed in the same way as ICHIGO NO TSUKIKAGE: three players of the clarinet, the contrabass and the percussion appear on the stage, but the sounds recorded in the tape are also played along with them in the actual music, so that it sounds like a septet, or even like a octet. The sounds recorded in the tape are made up of the same three instruments as played on the stage and of several other concrete sounds. Some of them are real sounds as we find in the materials and others are modulated or processed electrically. As the title Keikyo, which stands for echoing in the valley, suggests, I have in mind an image of the intercrossing two worlds: that of actual sounds on the stage and that of tape-recorded sounds whose existence is something like deformed shadow echoing the former.

FUMON is the common name for a series of pieces written for performers and the tape, which was produced at the Tokyo NHK Studio of Electronic Music in 1974. There are versions for chamber orchestra (I), large symphony orchestra (II), solo soprano (III), percussion quartet (IV), 6 instrumentalists (V); the latest version, FUMON VI, composed in 1997 is performed by three instrumentalists. The Tape includes transformed electronic sounds, natural sounds (wind, rain, etc), the sound of such instruments as bambon (new percussion instrument), shamisen and human voices. FUMON designates a relationship between human-being and nature.

Though it looks similar to a violoncello, a contrabass is in fact an instrument of quite different nature. It has a certain attractiveness that cannot be found in other instruments. When you play it in usual way with a bow, a contrabass is a bass string instrument indeed, but the quality of its sound is a lot different from those of other strings. When you play on it pizzicato or knock it on the body with fingers, etc, its sounds create a unique atmosphere, which is also different from what you find in percussion instruments. Bearing these peculiar characteristics of the instrument in mind, I tried to express a world of unfathomable depth with two contrabasses in this SHINKYO.

I think schakuhachi is quite different from any other instrument, in that it may not only be a musical instrument, but also be a symbolic medium of human spirit, which view couldn't but influence me at the time of the composition. Meanwhile, I also wanted to reach, by letting shakuhachi encounter the percussion instruments, some still different musical world. The piece is written for a little longer shakuhachi than usual, and a special performance technique, of old Tsugaru (Aomori) tradition, is partly taken in.

One might well expect from the title a melodious solo-violin part, but here I tried rather to write something more like a melodious Noh-flute part to be actually played by violin. The piece consists of several sections, and at one stage, in the latter half, there is a quotation from "Berceuse", composed by Martin Tytgat (1911-1995, Belgian violinist-composer).