The power of music is just incredible. In Japan, there is a man who helps terminal ill patients by playing music. It is Yoshihiro Karino, a performer of shinobue, a Japanese transverse flute. He could save lots of people around the world.
Mr Karino studied flute in college, and now teaches shinobue at Utsunomiya University. He mastered the Japanese musical instrument after studying flute. When he listened to the tone of shinobue for the first time in his life, it touched the “Japanese” part of his mind. He was pulled in to its world in a blink of an eye.
Being a performer of both flute and shinobue, he looks to embody the essence of both western and eastern music. He has a unique and valuable world, crossing the border of the different spheres.
Mr Karino regularly holds charity concerts at hospices as his life work.
The audience are patients who have a very short time to live and their families. Although I can only imagine what they are thinking and feeling when listening to his music, I saw that their sympathy towards and prayers for patients got together with his shinobue to echo in the room. What kind of music would you like to hear when you go to heaven? This question may be the same as asking you “how was your life?”.
Karino’s original song “Inori (prayer)” sounds like it is exactly the music that heals your whole life.
He has told me that one family holding ashes came to his concert before.
To provide more places to perform and make Karino’s job more challenging, Satoshi Suzuki, the manager of Transpheric Management, a business management consultancy and PR agent, kicked his support into gear.
Thanks to the spread of the internet, listeners’ needs are diversifying. There is a growing chance of success for independent music.
Surely, the world needs Karino’s music. You can listen to some of his songs at myspace or YouTube (click the links).
Ryo Kubota is a staff writer at Transpheric Management in Tokyo as well as a freelance writer. He has covered Sports for the Nippon Newspaper Company in Tokyo and teaches at a private tutoring school in Iruma, Japan. Having studied in both Tokyo and England in the areas of sociology, he has a keen interest in the world at large.
