We’re honored to be on the marketing team for this very special, meaningful and necessary event. Join us.
Kokoro: The Heart of Japan, a public symposium and choral concert will be held on March 6 at Merkin Concert Hall at the Kaufman Center (129 W.67th Street) on the one-year anniversary of the March 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami. The Tokyo Foundation in collaboration with the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University will host this event.
March 11, 2012, will mark the first anniversary of the magnitude-9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake that devastated northern Japan and caused one of the worst nuclear accidents in human history. On March 6 a symposium and choral concert will be held to reflect on Japan’s response to the disaster, with reference to various aspects of Japan’s traditional culture, particularly haiku, that offer deep insights into the emotional experience of the survivors.
Madoka Mayuzumi, one of Japan’s leading contemporary haiku poets, will introduce poems composed by the survivors themselves, many of whom lost all of their material possessions but nonetheless expressed happiness in reuniting with family members or found solace in simple manifestations of nature, like a fresh spring breeze. She will elucidate what the haiku form reveals about their perceptions of the unprecedented disaster and the values that permeate and underlie Japan’s culture. Mayuzumi will later be joined by a panel of Japan scholars from Columbia University and the greater NY area to discuss both the unique and universal aspects of Japanese society as reflected in the haiku poems and the response to the March 2011 disaster.
The symposium will be followed by the world premiere of a song for the people of Fukushima—who are unlikely to be able to return home for many years—that fondly recalls the prefecture’s four seasons and natural beauty. The choral piece is a collaborative benefit project by Mayuzumi who penned the lyrics and composer and musical producer Akira Senju and will be performed by the Japan Choral Harmony and the Men’s Glee Club of New York.
