We were lucky to catch up with Saeko Kujiraoka recently and have shared our conversation below.

Saeko , appreciate you joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

When I was a young child, my mother would play the piano and sing, and I loved singing along with her. This became my musical foundation. Then, when I turned 5 years old, I started piano lessons with my older sister.

Around the time I was in my second year of junior high school (or the eighth grade), our house was remodeled to include a 12-jyo (12 tatami size) teaching room, and my mom taught ikebana (Japanese-style flower arrangement) classes there. My mom’s friend, who was an Ikuta-style koto teacher, would rent the space to teach koto lessons. The standard koto is a 13-stringed Japanese zither instrument.

When my mother’s friend first started teaching the koto in my mother’s 12-jyo room, I could hear the sounds of the koto coming from inside the house as I was walking home from school, and I thought it sounded beautiful and enchanting. Soon after hearing such exquisite sounds coming from my house, I switched from taking piano lessons to taking koto lessons. I was hooked and knew I wanted to pursue the path of becoming a professional koto musician.

Saeko , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Saeko Kujiraoka, and I was born and raised in Japan. In my early teens, I began studying the Ikuta technique of playing the koto. I eventually received advanced degrees in koto, sangen (a Japanese 3-stringed banjo-like instrument), and Japanese classical singing from the Michio Miyagi School of Koto in Japan.

I moved to Los Angeles about 30 years ago and, ever since, I have been teaching koto lessons and have been involved in numerous performances. In Japan, I would play in front of people only once a year for our group’s recital. But when I came to Los Angeles, I challenged myself to network with Japanese and non-Japanese musicians and other creatives in the Los Angeles area and to expand my skills and performance possibilities. Since moving to Los Angeles, I’ve been performing at concerts, festivals, ceremonies, parties, receptions, retirement homes, schools, libraries, art museums, and other various events and locations.

I’m also involved in many diverse collaborations. I’m part of a harp and koto duo, and we’ve released an album titled Harp & Koto Stories. I perform with other koto players, with musicians who play other Japanese and non-Japanese instruments, with Japanese dancers, with gospel artists, with classical music groups, with jazz groups, with Bossa Nova groups, etc. I’ve worked on movie soundtrack recordings like Kung Fu Panda and have collaborated on album recording sessions with Luke Steele (a member of the electronic music duo Empire of the Sun), female rapper M.I.A., and others. I’ve even played the koto for music in video games like League of Legends and Genshin Impact’s 2022 concert called Melodies of an Endless Journey. And for the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, I played the 13-stringed koto and the 17-string (bass) koto in the “Tokyo Imagine” arrangement by Hans Zimmer.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I think it’s important to pass on not just the playing skills of traditional Japanese instruments but at least the knowledge of their existence to current and future generations. Starting during the early 2000s, the government in Japan have been trying to boost their country’s knowledge of and interest in traditional Japanese instruments by making it mandatory for school children to take a Japanese instrument class for one to two years. Globally, I would also like people from other cultures and ethnicities to learn about Japanese instruments. I have an online presence and have been contacted by people from all around the world to learn more about the koto.

Many traditional Japanese koto and sangen songs are long and slow. For those who aren’t used to these types of songs, it could become too boring. To keep people engaged, especially those who have never heard the koto before, I perform faster paced, contemporary Japanese koto songs and songs I have arranged from jazz standards and even pop music.

Through my various teaching and performance activities, my biggest hope is to inspire harmony amongst our diverse cultures and ethnicities. And in doing so, essentially, I hope this inspired harmony will play a role, albeit small, in helping to spread peace and joy around the world.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

It’s rewarding to be able to perform for Japanese elders who are reminded of Japanese songs they’ve heard in their younger years. It warms my heart to see their faces light up and nod, sing, and/or clap along to the songs I’m playing. And it’s equally rewarding to perform for those who have never heard or seen a koto before, many of whom are from different cultures. After my performances, people frequently approach me, asking questions about and expressing interest in the instrument and Japanese culture. These are encouraging moments, and it tells me that I have kept them engaged.

One of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had was on New Year’s Day 2019. I had the opportunity to play the koto on a beautiful Japanese garden float called Harmony’s Garden during the Rose Parade. The float was made by the Sierra Madre Rose Float Association, and its design was inspired by a Japanese garden at Sierra Madre Elementary School, which was built in 1931 by the parents of Japanese American students. Unfortunately, the elementary school garden was neglected after World War II and the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans living in the United States. Then in the 1990s, students worked to restore the garden as an act of goodwill thus calling it the Goodwill Garden. The float that was inspired by the original and current garden was absolutely stunning and was awarded the Director’s Trophy for the most outstanding artistic design. The parade was five miles long and lasted two hours. The sidewalks, bleachers, and tops of buildings were packed with spectators and hundreds of thousands of people across the nation and some parts of the world watched this parade. It was truly rewarding to know that so many people would be briefly educated about the history of Japanese Americans. And, I was also ecstatic to know that so many would hear and see the koto, for perhaps the first time in their lives, and learn a little bit about the instrument from the parade’s announcers. Until my next globally-broadcasted-“educating” opportunity, this will be one of the biggest highlights of my career.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.saekokoto.com
• Instagram: @saeko.kujiraoka
• Facebook: Saeko Zirkelbach Kujiraoka
• Youtube: @saekokz