Unit Souzou (Portland) is a Japanese taiko drum group that draws its name from the Japanese word souzou, meaning imagination, creation, and noisy. Michelle Fujii and Toru Watanabe formed the group in 2014. Unit Souzou currently has a professional performance team with several taiko specialists and a community performance group.
Bio
Unit Souzou, a Japanese taiko drum group, draws its name from the Japanese word souzou, meaning imagination, creation, and noisy. Taiko drumming involves several people simultaneously playing several different drums. In Japan, this style of drumming has been used for hundreds of years in military, theatrical, and communicative contexts. Dance is intimately connected to taiko drumming. In 2014, Michelle Fujii and Toru Watanabe founded Unit Souzou. Unit Souzou includes a professional performance team with taiko professionals as well as a community performance group. They also offer school classes, adult and children’s workshops, and more. Michelle Fujii began performing taiko in San Jose, California, and continued while at UCLA. After graduating, North America Pioneer Taiko, San Jose Taiko, hired her. The Japanese government awarded her a Bunka-cho fellowship to study with Warabi-za in Northern Japan, an institution that teaches taiko and folk dance to new generations. Fujii learned dozens of dances at Warabi-za. Fujii also studied for three-years with master teacher and dancer, Shohei Kikuchi, former Artistic Director of Warabi-za, and Director of the dance school, Manyoushu. Toru Watanabe became interested in dance in college, while he was leading Soran Heart, a Yosakoi (an energetic Japanese dance with modern music) team. After graduation, he pursued his interests to become a professional dancer, taiko player, and theatre actor at Warabi-za, where he met Michelle. The two married and combined their expertise, passion, and experience in taiko and folk dance to realize their dream—Unit Souzou. Fujii and Watanabe keep expanding the organization in order to serve broader audiences, locally, nationally, and internationally.
