Building Healthy Communities for Recovery

From October 23^rd to 25^th, we held the fifth folk song concert tour at 11 venues in Koriyama City, Katsurao Village, Motomiya City and Nihonmatsu City in Fukushima Prefecture featuring the popular comedian Mr. Nekohachi EDOYA and the folk music team called ‘Minyo-jin’. Same as the previous tours, every venue was packed with the audience with excited and throbbing expression.

The concert started with the smooth lead of Mr. Nekohachi, who is famous for his performance of mimicking animals. Led by the dynamic intro of Shamisen (traditional Japanese string instrument), the singers’ powerful and penetrating voices pleasantly filled the venue. First, each performer sung his/her specialty, and then the performers took requests from the audience. Not only the Fukushima-originated folk songs such as ‘Aizu Bandaisan’ and ‘Soma Nagareyama’ thrilled the audience, the songs rooted in Tohoku area such as ‘Sado Okesa’ and ‘Tsugaru Aiya Bushi’ also moved some of the audience to tears since these songs invoked the memory of their family members. In the finale, ‘Soma Bon-uta’, one of the standard pieces among Fukushima people, was performed and the audience truly enjoyed clapping, swinging, singing along and dancing. The highlight of the concert was the part in which Mr. Nekohachi and Ms. Keiko CHIDA together performed four songs in which names of animals appear in lyrics. In the interval of the beautiful singing performance of Ms. CHIDA, Mr. Nekohachi mimicked the voice of animals such as cows and bush warblers comically but to the life, which filled the venue with roaring laughter. 

Here are some remarks we received from the audience. 

A lady who participated in the concert at Odagaisama Center on October 23^rd

‘I stayed with my daughter, who lived outside Fukushima Prefecture for three months right after the earthquake before moving to this Miharu Temporary Housing Complex. I am getting used to the life here and I enjoy doing handicraft such as knitting with other residents. I had the knitting session today too, but I wrapped up earlier to get a good seat at the concert! Usually I am not that interested in concerts but if it is folk music, that is different. I laughed a lot for the first time in a long time. The winter here is much colder than Hamadori, where I used to live and the heat in summer is also tough, but I am getting used to and trying to cheer up.’ 

Ms. Konno, aged 63, participated in the concert at Takagi Temporary Housing Complex on October 25^th

‘The concert was great! It all cleared the wretched feeling I had been feeling these days. The song I requested, ‘Kabenuri Jinku’, is the song of my memories. I should have brought my husband too.’ She was originally from Chiba Prefecture in Kanto area and moved to Namie Town when she got married. She told us that she enjoyed working on handicraft with the other residents in her free time and she also expressed her wish to let people all over Japan know how the residents were trying to move forward.