To mark the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and Japan, the Indo-Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Trust and the Chennai Japan Association hosted an evening of cultural performances on August 6. With a date also marking the anniversary of the devastating nuclear attack on Hiroshima-Nagasaki, the event aims to celebrate the human and cultural forces that survived the horrors.

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The Chennai Karaoke Band (CKB) and students from the IJCCI Language School performed that night, with Taga Masayuki, Consul General of Japan, playing trumpet with them.

“Indo-Japanese relations have never been as strong as they are today. I like this kind of program because there is more interaction between people and they know each other better. I am very happy to hear the performances of Indian students who are learning Japanese, and their Japanese is very good,” said the Consul General.

Opening the show with a graceful performance from Bharatanatyam, Sarishma Sreejath, a student at the IJCCI Language School, described India’s performing arts and heritage. He performed Alarippu and Ulagam pugazhum which displayed solemnity and elegance reflecting the richness of Indian culture.

Then, Chennai Karaoke Band, consisting of Arata Kato on drums, Kousuke Kumagai on keyboards, Yoshiyuki Sakamoto on guitar, Shigehiko Tanaka and Masaaki Nose on guitar and bass, Shinichiro Mirura and Neeraja Sunder Rajan on vocals and l General Consul. Taga Masayuki on the trumpet saw some students from the IJCCI language school performing and singing in Japanese. The standout performance was the Japanese performance of John Denver’s evergreen song “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

A Japanese Indian culture night was held recently in Chennai. | Photo credit: SRINIVASAN KV

A skit in which the characters simply speak through Japanese tongue twisters followed by a game of tongue twisters, engaging the audience – they have the opportunity to say it in Japanese or English.

Anime, a cultural phenomenon that sparked global interest in Japan, takes the form of musical dramas filled with popular Anime songs such as Yuri on Ice, Naruto, Fullmetal Alchemist, and K-On to name a few. It presents the life of a teenager through its various stages of growth. After all, as Yuri on Ice said, we are all born to write history. We learn from history; we carry it with us and we have the power to rewrite history.