About Menu:
Origin Story
We gathered in 2012 with the notion that a local Science Fiction and Fantasy convention could do with some taiko, which then led to our first performance at CONvergence in 2013. Since then we have never stopped bringing our passion, our creativity, our unabashed geekiness (and the occasional kazoo), to everything we do.
Our heritage and influences
While we all have our own reasons - some shared, some unique - that drew us to this art form, we do all share a path by which we came to enjoy, adore, and play taiko. That begins with our teachers and our teacher’s teachers. It also includes those who gave us space and helped us grow. As well as the artists who continue to inspire, motivate, and challenge us to be more.
All of us have been in the past or are now students of Taiko Arts Midwest’s teaching program (formerly Mu Daiko). There the teachers who helped us build our skills were led or taught by Iris Shiraishi. Who in turn (along with some of us), were taught by Rick Shiomi who established Mu Daiko in 1997. Rick Shiomi was in his own turn a student of the San Francisco Taiko Dojo, led by Seiichi Tanaka Sensei. Tanaka Sensei established one of the first taiko groups in North America in 1968 after traveling back to Japan to learn taiko from the visionary inventor of modern kumi daiko, Grandmaster Daihachi Oguchi.
But the history of our teachers isn’t the full story. We owe just as much to those who have supported us in our beginning, and over time. Linda Hashimoto Van Dooijeweert gave us our first practice space, which she kindly lent to us from her Traditional Japanese Dance group Sansei Yonsei Kai. It was there that we first gathered, rehearsed, and launched our first performance. However, it was Kogen Taiko, who at the time were going into hiatus, that gifted us their former venues and blessing .
Our Name Explained
Our name (pronounced HAH-ree-sehn DAI-ko) is a language pun in two parts.
First, a harisen is a tightly folded paper fan which gets comedic use in Japanese media to correct the wayward by giving them a good, and audibly distinctive, swat. Second, we think of ourselves as devotees or fans of taiko among many other geeky things.
We are Harisen Daiko. Fans that hit things.