Sho Asano and the Great East japan Earthquake: The Completion of Recycled Instruments and a New Era for the Tsugaru-jamisen

One after another, Asano completed the recycled instruments he had begun to make around the summer of the year the earthquake struck.

This was part of the Zero One Project conducted with fellow musicians in Miyagi to create instructions out of the rubble generated by the earthquake.

The project involved getting permission to sift through the vast amounts of rubble in search of usable wood fragments, having craftspeople select the best specimens and creating a variety of instruments.

The completed tsugaru-jamisen instruments were created almost entirely form wood that appeared to have once been the counter of someone’s home.
The first recycled instrument was the tsugaru-jamisen, and Asano has taken custody of it to give performances.

Traditionally, a tsugaru-jamisen is made from hard wood. The wood is fine grained and the instrument is heavier than it looks.
The shamisen that was created, in part due to the type of wood in the first place and perhaps due to it having been immersed in seawater, felt about half the weight of a regular shamisen.
But considering that it was made out of objects that were ingrained in someone’s life, there is something heavy about it that sharpens the mind.
By becoming an instrument, it now exists as a tool for Asano to pass down the story to various younger generations.