KACHO-FUEI（2015）

I composed this piece in 2015 in response to a commission from the Bunkyō Academy Foundation to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Bunkyō Civic Hall.
The title Kachō-Fūei is a neologism literally meaning ‘poetic discourse on flowers and birds’ coined by the poet Takahama Kyoshi (1874-1959) and represents the basic ideal of the Hototogisu school of poetry of which he was the leader. In essence it refers to the belief that haiku poetry should be concerned with providing an objective and detached representation of phenomena in the natural world that occur with the passing of the seasons and of the human responses to them. There is an expression in Japanese kachō no tsukai (‘messenger of flowers and birds’) which originates in a story that the Chinese Tang dynasty emperor Xuanzong (r. 712-56) employed an envoy or messenger (tsukai) to seek out the most beautiful women in the empire，and the term came to be used in classical Japanese literature to denote a messenger who would intercede in conveying romantic messages between lovers. In terms of human emotions Kyoshi appears to have been particularly interested in kachō-fūei in the context of romantic relationships between men and women，and it was this notion that gave me the idea for the structure of this piece.
My aim in the piece is to celebrate human relationships while providing a poetic eulogy of Tokyo’s Bunkyō-ku ward. Although located close to the centre of Tokyo，Bunkyō-ku is full of greenery and combines contemporary urban functions with a strong sense of the district’s illustrious historical legacy. The piece attempts to revel in this scenic contrast，my aim being to depict the ward’s overflowing vitality along with its underlying lustrous sensuality.
Much of my compositional output is based on relatively matter-of-fact，unemotional concepts，but I would like performers of the present work not to based their realisation on such an approach but rather to place importance on how to bring out a natural sense of breathing and emotional content.