Q006:
Where did you grow up and when were you born? Was it a musical family? Was it a fairly normal Japanese childhood?
A006:
I was born in Osaka in 1965, but we later moved to Nara. (Osaka has a very different culture to Tokyo ? maybe a bit like the difference between Scotland and England). I think that my family was pretty normal, except that my grandfather was a noh performer of the Hosho school. My father didn't follow in his footsteps, but when I was a kid I remember him singing some noh pieces to me at home. My mother loved classical music and when I was a kid she never let me hear any pop around the house. I've been told that I used to hum Beethoven's Pastorale. When I was a child I loved reading historical novels and books about famous people, and I wanted to be a politician or a philosopher when I grew up. (NB: Hosho is one of the four traditional schools of noh acting, dating back to the 14th century at least. Let me know if you need to know any more about it or noh in general, or about Nara.)