The world needs art and travel now more than ever, says Japanese “Samurai cool” performer who will open WiT Singapore 2023
The day before he was due to open WiT Japan & North Asia with his “Samurai cool” performance, Katsumi Sakakura, award-winning Samurai performer, had just landed in Narita from Bologna, Italy.
Japanese author, artist and actor Katsumi Sakakura performs “The Life Of Hokusai” at Arena Del Sole Theater on June 29, 2023 in Bologna, Italy. (Photo by Roberto Serra – Iguana Press/Getty Images)
In front of sell-out crowds on two dates and to standing ovations, he had performed his newest work, “The Life of Hokusai” at Arena del Sole Theater in Bologna. The art piece, exploring the life of Katsushika Hokusai, the father of Japanese painting, most known for “The Great Wave of Kanagawa” masterpiece, has won several awards, including Cool Japan Matching Award 2022, and was also performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2021.
Katsumi considers “The Life of Hokusai” his most important and significant work and ironically, its success came out of the Covid-19 pandemic – and it’s a story of love, loss and redemption.
“The pandemic was a very sad time but perhaps it was also very good because it made me rethink everything I was doing as an artist,” he told me. “All our projects stopped but then we discussed among ourselves and said, we shouldn’t stop – we are artists. Artists make people’s lives happy. When people are happy, they don’t need art but they need art when they are sad.”
And so Katsumi and his Orientarhythm troupe continued with their projects – they travelled to Kazakhstan in 2021 during the pandemic – and, at home, he started working on the Hokusai project, which had originally been planned to time with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which would have marked the 260th anniversary of the artist’s birthday.
Katsumi Sakakura: “During the pandemic, we could travel in our own country but real travel is more than domestic. When you travel abroad, you change minds.”
“Everybody knows the Great Wave painting, but nobody knows the personality of Hokusai, even the Japanese. When I went to Italy, I saw many people wearing Hokusai T-shirts, everybody knows the drawing. I wanted to explain the human behind the art.
“The more I researched him, the more I felt he and I were very alike. Like me, he loves sweets and he can’t drink alcohol. Like me, he is an introvert. I don’t like crowds, I am more comfortable with one-on-one. He lived in the Edo period and when he walked outside, he used his kimono as a shield. I use my headphones in the same way to shut out the world.”
He found similarities in their lives as well. “His wife died after they had been married 29 years. When I first performed Hokusai in 2020, my wife and I were 29 years married. After his wife died, he plunged into sorrow and sadness, and he stopped working for a year. After that, he produced The Great Wave masterpiece.
“It made me think, if I lost my wife now, I wouldn’t be able to go on. Yet he did, and he produced the greatest works of his life after that.”
Katsumi channelled the sadness he felt during the pandemic when he couldn’t see his parents for nearly three years and his love and gratitude for his wife into the Hokusai work. “Before the pandemic, I never said, I love you, to my wife. Japanese men never say that. Inside, I have love and gratitude for her, but I never said it.
“She’s worked three jobs to support my career. She told me to stop my part-time jobs so I could focus on my art. When Hokusai suddenly lost his wife, he felt he didn’t say ‘I love you’ enough.
“So I rethought the whole Hokusai story. Everyone needs love and I explain love through the Hokusai story.”
Katsumi and Orientarhythm performing at WiT Japan & North Asia 2023.
Katsumi says the one thing the pandemic has proven is that “performance arts cannot exist without a peaceful world and growing economy, and the world needs art now more than ever”.
“In Germany, they gave financial aid to artists because they say, everyone is depressed, let’s give people art. When everybody’s down, it’s time for artists to stand up and cheer everybody up.”
He says the same thing is true of travel – the world needs travel now more than ever. “In December 2021, during the pandemic, I went to Kazakhstan to perform at the invitation of the government. I needed many documents to travel then.
“Many people don’t realise it but Kazakhstan and Japan have a common mythology – the “katana” (samurai sword) is made from a type of steel called tamahagane, and it was the Kazakhstan people who taught us how to make that steel in a clay furnace called a “tatara”.
“That’s what travel does – shows us what we have in common”.
He added, “During the pandemic, we could travel in our own country but real travel is more than domestic. When you travel abroad, you change minds. For some people, virtual travel is enough. For me, it’s not.”
Note: Katsumi Sakakura and Orientarhythm will be performing at WiT Singapore, Oct 2-4. Sign up here.
I first wrote about Katsumi Sakakura here, when he first opened WiT Japan & North Asia in 2017.