Townspeople's Culture and Drummers: The Art of Manipulation in the Mid-Edo Period (Mid-18th Century)

Townspeople's Culture and Drummers: The Art of Manipulation in the Mid-Edo Period (Mid-18th Century)

In the mid-Edo period, economic leadership shifted from the samurai to the townspeople, and the social culture of the merchants matured. Drummers were indispensable as a link between customers, prostitutes, and geisha at tatami banquets. They were masters of reading the atmosphere, and they honed their art of breaking the silence with puns and impromptu songs, and turning tension into laughter. Taiko drummers were not mere clowns; they were "ma" (pause) directors who could manipulate the breath of the audience. In the latter half of the 18th century, the art of taiko dancing evolved into the art of hokan (aiding and abetting), a craft that merged with the Kamigata culture to orchestrate human relationships on the stage of the tatami room. They maintained order through laughter and even sublimated silence into an art form. The taiko drummers were truly the "artists of laughter" who illuminated the shadows of the Edo night.