Taiko and the Asian/American body: Drums, 'Rising Sun', and the question of gender

This essay addresses the Japanese tradition of taiko drumming as an Asian A merican practice inflected by transnational discourses of orientalism and c olonialism. I argue that the potential in taiko for slippage between the As ian and the Asian American body is both problematics and on-going, and that the body of the taiko player is gendered and racialized in complex ways. T hrough a consideration of a scene in the film 'Rising Sun' (1993), I addres s a key cinematic misrepresentation of taiko and its impact on the North Am erican taiko community. I contrast imperialist American tropes that feminiz e Japan with the predominance of Japanese American and Asian American women who play taiko in the US and I suggest that taiko has become a means for A sian American women to recuperate racist and sexist narratives in a deeply personal and physical manner that implicates the very definition of the Asi an American woman's body. I argue that the sensual sounded body has moved t hrough a series of historical constructions and emerges asserting new Asian American presences, recasting issues of cultural authenticity in the proce ss.