Joji Hirota

Joji Hirota (廣田丈自, Hirota Jōji) was born in 1948 in Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island. His father sang folk songs as a hobby and gave him a child-sized shakuhachi when he was five. He played in a fife and drum band at primary school and in brass bands at junior high and high school, picking up timpani and cymbals. He began formal percussion study at eleven and composed his first pieces at thirteen. His drumming teacher was the Hokkaido taiko master Itto Ohba, who told him not to copy his teacher's style but to build his own music on what he had been taught. Hirota later wrote the piece Hokkai in tribute to Ohba and his son Kazuoki.

Hirota took up the piano in his final year of high school to prepare for music college and entered the Kyoto Municipal University of Arts (now Kyoto City University of Arts), where he studied percussion. He left in his fourth year to take up professional work after being invited to join Stomu Yamashta's Red Buddha Theatre. He also played with the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra before leaving Japan.

In 1972 Hirota became music director and percussionist of Stomu Yamashta's Red Buddha Theatre, which played Avignon and toured France, Britain and the United States. In 1977 he became music director and solo percussionist of the Lindsay Kemp company, and his music for Onnagata contributed to the company's 1991 Time Out award for best dance company. His first album, Sahasurara (1976), was issued under the name George Hirota, followed by The Wheel of Fortune (1981) and Rain Forest Dream (1990).

With Anthony Phillips he composed music for Anglia Television's Survival series and library labels, released on Travelogues 4, Missing Links Volume 3: Time and Tide and Wildlife. He appeared at WOMAD from 1986, formed Trísan with Pól Brennan and Guo Yue at Real World's 1992 Recording Week, recorded Red Ribbon with Guo Yue (1994) and released The Gate on Real World Records in 1999, with a Japanese edition on EMI Japan in 2002. He formed the duo Taiko to Tabla with Pete Lockett, the JJK Project with John Kaizan Neptune and Kenny Endo, and worked as percussionist and co-composer on a Royal Shakespeare Company Macbeth.

His taiko ensemble, founded in the 1980s and later called the London Taiko Drummers, opened Live Earth at Wembley in 2007 and an Amnesty International anniversary ceremony in London in 2008, and toured Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates for Japanese government cultural projects, as well as Israel, Africa and Europe. For ARC Music he recorded Japanese Folk Songs (2007), Masters of Percussion (2008), Japanese Drums (2009), Japanese Folk Songs II (2013), Japanese Taiko (2017) and Prayer's Tale (2021), and in 2020 produced the album Taiko Do for the Italian group KyoShinDo. His playing was used in The Last Samurai, 47 Ronin, Silence and Isle of Dogs, and he led a three-player taiko ensemble at AIR Studios for the Ghost of Tsushima score.

Hirota settled permanently in England in the 1970s, saying he found it a place so full of possibilities that he stayed for the rest of his life. He was married to Michi, and they had a daughter, Kazumi. He spoke fluent English and was remembered by colleagues as generous, precise and full of joy, with a quiet manner and a quick, dry wit.

Hirota rejected the idea that he was simply mixing traditions. As a musician, he said, he drew on all of them to create his own style. He explored Japanese folk music partly because of the serious interest in folk traditions he found in the West, long before it was widely valued back in Japan. Of taiko he said he aimed to create music in a new contemporary style while keeping the grace and high energy of the tradition, and he asked his drummers for cooperation, good spirit, musicality, higher skills and continuity of training.

Hirota is credited with doing more than almost anyone to bring taiko drumming to audiences across Europe, and with a career that joined Japanese folk, Buddhist and Shinto ritual music and theatre traditions to contemporary performance. Generations of British taiko players passed through his groups, and his drummers went on to form ensembles of their own. His Tohoku memorial work, his soundtrack playing and his long collaborations with Anthony Phillips, Guo Yue and the London Metropolitan Orchestra keep his sound in circulation. ARC Music reported that Newsweek placed him among the 100 most respected Japanese people in the world.

1991: Time Out award for best dance company, for the Lindsay Kemp company's Onnagata, with his music. 1993: Tower Records (New York) nomination for best contemporary instrumental album for Trísan. 2004: Commendation from the Japanese Ambassador in London for his contribution to Japanese music outside Japan. 2012: Commendation from the emperor and empress of Japan for his work overseas.

Selected albums: Sahasurara (1976, as George Hirota); The Wheel of Fortune (1981); Rain Forest Dream (1990); Trísan (1992); Red Ribbon, with Guo Yue (1994); Missing Links Volume 3: Time and Tide, with Anthony Phillips (1997); The Gate (Real World, 1999); Taiko to Tabla, with Pete Lockett (2002 and 2004); Japanese Folk Songs (2007); Japanese Drums, with Hiten Ryu Daiko (2009); Japanese Folk Songs II (2013); Japanese Taiko, with the London Taiko Drummers (2017); Prayer's Tale (2021); Wildlife, with Anthony Phillips. Screen and game credits include The Last Samurai, 47 Ronin, Silence, Isle of Dogs, Ghost of Tsushima and Anglia Television's Survival. He appeared in session on BBC Radio 3's Music Planet with Kathryn Tickell.

Joji Hirota died suddenly in London on 6 September 2026, aged 78, according to the London Metropolitan Orchestra, Wikipedia and the French music site Rythmes Croisés. Rythmes Croisés reported a ruptured aneurysm, and the Italian site Backdigit reported an abdominal aortic aneurysm at St Mary's Hospital, London, though it gave the date as 16 September. Backdigit wrote that his wife was with him and that his daughter Kazumi, who first announced the news, stayed on the phone with him to the end because she could not get back from the United States in time. Anthony Phillips, Real World Records and the London Metropolitan Orchestra published tributes. His funeral was set for 1:30pm on Wednesday 21 October 2026 at Chiltern Parks Greenacres Living Memorial Park.