On the anniversary of the atomic bombing on August 11th, I held a concert on the cimbalom at the Kyoto Museum of Art Annex Hall, which was the model for the CH Post Office, the setting of "Violet Evergarden," which will be aired on Friday Road Show today (November 25th), and performed "Michishirube," the ending theme of season XNUMX, as an encore. The show appeals to the horrors of war, and CH Post Office, where Violet begins her journey in search of "I love you" from her PTSD, made me think of this year when the Ukraine war began, the people of Kyoto Animation who died in the arson attack while making this work, and the people who rose up from there, and I thought that this is the perfect situation and song to think of those who died in the atomic bombing on this anniversary of the atomic bombing, and to imagine a world without war.
This will be a bit of a spoiler, but for those who don't know, "Violet Evergarden" is a very beautiful anime produced by Kyoto Animation. It is about a girl who was raised as a weapon near Germany during what seems to be World War I and closed her heart, but is treated as a human by her last superior officer, the "Major." Just as she begins to regain her humanity, she loses both arms on the battlefield, and tries to live after the war in search of the meaning of the words "I love you" that the Major spoke just before he "died in battle." Her lost arms are replaced with high-performance prosthetics, and she is now able to type, so she works as an automatic writing doll (ghostwriting) at CH Post in a society where there are still many illiterate people, while searching for "I love you." This drama is layered with Kyoto Animation's highly transparent pictures in a tranquil setting, and covers such topics as war PTSD, autism, typists who were at the forefront of women's advancement in white-collar work at the time, the scars of war that remain in society, what it means to live, what it means to die, and what it means. It's a long story, but it's an anime that I highly recommend you watch.
In this performance, we used the "Cimbalom", an instrument that is often played in Ukraine, which was invaded this year. The performer, Junko Sakimura, performed with Ukrainian musicians in the Czech Republic this October.
The cimbalom is a dulcimer-like instrument found in Eastern and Central Europe.1Smaller versions are also used in military bands, so Violet may have heard one before. Please listen to this piece with that thought in mind.
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Concert hosted by the Kansai Cimbalom Association
From "The Echoes of Sorrow Return to Kyoto 2022"
- Song: Michishirube (Lyrics: Minori Chihara, Music: Daisuke Kikuta)
- Cimbalom: Junko Sakimura
- Piano: Junko Shimizu
- Piano tuning: Kenji Shinohara
- Tuning of the Cimbalom: Kenji Koide
- Cimbalom owned by Rumi Tsukahara: Bohac Luxury Prestige
- Platinum Sponsors: Rumi Tsukahara, Misako Ogura
- Supported by: Honorary Consulate General of Hungary in Osaka
- Recording location: Kyoto Museum Annex
- Recorded on: August 2022, 8
- Filming and editing: Tonescape
bonus
Part of Leidenschaftlich seems to be a town called "Cochem" along the Moselle River, near the Roman heritage city "Trier", where the OAuth Workshop was located. This area is famous for its scenic beauty. Heidelberg is also said to have been used as a model. I'd like to go there.