<Begin Segment 4>

MN: Well, I'm gonna go back to your childhood since we're talking about your odori lessons.

GH: Okay, yes.

MN: Who was your teacher?

GH: Originally...

MN: [Whispers] Fujima Kansuma.

GH: Yeah, Fujima Kansuma was coming to Gardena to teach, and so my mother had me take lessons from her.

MN: How old were you when you started to take lessons?

GH: I believe I was somewhere around four or five, something like that. I was young.

MN: Now, where did she teach the lessons, what building?

GH: In the beginning it was a building at the end of our block, and then later I think she was teaching at the Japanese school, Moneta Gakuen.

MN: So did she come, like, once a week?

GH: I believe she did.

MN: And then what were the lessons like?

GH: Well, we'd have to sit 'til our turn and watch the others get their lessons. And I think most of it I kind of learned as she was giving lessons to others so that by the time I got to that music, that lesson, I learn pretty quickly.

MN: So everybody had to sit and watch?

GH: We had to sit and watch and wait 'til our turn.

MN: Now, when Fujima Kansuma taught, did she have live musicians, or was it record players?

GH: It was record. We danced to the modern, the modern music.

MN: At that time.

GH: At that time, yes.

MN: So on average, how many students does she have in Gardena?

GH: I'm not absolutely sure, but I think there were in the teens. We had quite a few people.

MN: Were they all girls?

GH: Yes. They were all girls, yes.

MN: And then let me go back to, you're taking odori lessons, but then you also mentioned the Yamatoza, and you were in the oshibai.

GH: [Laughs] Yes.

MN: Can you share with us what that kind of experience was like?

GH: It was a part as a child of course, and all the actors were men. And there was one part I had to be in where the mother picks me up, and I looked up at him and he was just perspiring and I wanted to laugh but I couldn't, 'cause it was really a sad story about a little child whose father was a drunkard or something and the child was looking for her parents, something of that sort. My father knew the story and would explain all that to me. But I had different parts like that to play in the oshibai.

[Interruption]

MN: -- oshibai and all these men are playing women parts also, and you're in this play.

GH: Yes.

MN: How long were these rehearsals like?

GH: They were long. They were long. Because I think the people came when they could come, they decided on a certain day and they'd do it, I think, (...) it was long.

MN: And I imagine it, everybody works, so it's in evenings, the rehearsals?

GH: Yes.

MN: And then who made all the sceneries and the costumes?

GH: I'm not sure, I think they had, the Yamatoza people would probably know people who could do those things and they made the backdrops and everything.

MN: And then --

GH: They also had people who sang the gitayu that sang with the story too, so they had to get all that organized, I suppose. I was so little then, so I don't know how well the organization went, but I know that I was put into those plays.

MN: So if they had the singers, then they also had shamisen players too.

GH: Yes, yes.

MN: They had all those live musicians. That's a lot of people.

GH: Yeah, involved in it.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.