Japanese musician Maestro Kicho Takano will play "The Caribbean Sea" for a local audience when he visits Trinidad and Tobago next week. Inspired by his impressions of the Caribbean Sea, the song was composed after he first visited the region in 1996 during his Latin America and Caribbean tour.

"I can see why the people of Europe and North America have long harboured a yearning for the Caribbean," he said. "It made me so glad to find it as enchanting as I had imagined."

East Meets West - a free concert featuring traditional Japanese music - will take place on Wednesday at the Central Bank Auditorium. The concert is being organised by the Embassy of Japan in collaboration with the Japan Foundation. Seisuke Shimizu, first secretary of the Embassy said it is a chance to expose Trinidadians to a genre of music that they may not be familiar with, a style of Japan music that is an integral part of Japanese culture.

Maestro Kicho Takano, an internationally acclaimed koto performer and composer, will be leading the visiting musicians. The four other musicians are Michiko Takano (Maestro Takano's wife), Akiko Yazaki, Ryohei and Kazuhiro Tanikawa.

Seventy-five year-old Takano has won numerous awards from as early as the age of 29. Among them the Grand Prix in the Fine Arts Festival hosted by the Cultural Affairs Agency in Japan in 1982, the Cultural Medal with a purple medal from the Japanese government in 1990, the Order of the Rising Sun from the Gold Rays with Rosette in 1995 and the Braille Mainichi Culture Award in 1996.

Takano himself is visually impaired. He graduated from the Tokyo Public School for the Blind in 1948 and the Tokyo National University of Fine Art and Music in 1950. From 1948-85, he was a professor at the School for the Blind, attached to the University of Tsukuba.

From 1957-82, he was a member of the Educational Program Instruction Board for the Blind, Ministry of Education in Japan. He spent 1982-84 as a member of the editorial board of "Manual of Musical Notes in Braille" and from 1983-91, he was a member of the Book Selection Committee for the Ministry of Public Welfare in Japan.

Takano has performed all over the world, including Canada, the United States, Greece, Italy, Ecuador, Barbados and Jamaica.

He is reportedly looking forward to his second visit to the Caribbean, his last being in 1996 during his Latin America and Caribbean tour.

As a special feature of Wednesday's recital, he will perform with local pannist Brian "Tikki" Brumant. Brumant has been a member of the Renegades Steel Orchestra for the past 19 years and has participated in several musical activities in the town of Fukuno in Toyama Prefecture, Japan.

It was Brumant and Renegades that inspired a group of Fukuno townspeople to start their own steel orchestra, today known as the Sukiyaki Steel Orchestra. This Japanese pan side visited Trinidad and Tobago in February 1997 to participate as special guest artistes in Champs in Concert.

Brumant and Takano, who is currently in Colombia, will meet for the first time on Tuesday when the Japanese musicians visit the home of Japanese ambassador Yoshio Yamagishi for a private reception.

Takano will arrive in Trinidad tomorrow evening. After 'East Meets West' on Wednesday, a concert which is free for all interested, he will spend one day on the island before leaving for a show in St Lucia on Friday.

Japanese instruments may seem strange to us in the West. Among those that would be heard on Wednesday would be the koto, shamisen and shakuhachi. Together, this trio is called sankyoku and is one of the most popular ensembles in Japanese traditional music.

The Koto is a 13-string, long zither (an ancient stringed instrument) which is used as one f the main chamber instruments of Japanese music. Its origins can be traced back along the Silk Road. Long zithers similar to the koto passed through China and Korea before reaching Japan. It has a hollow body over which movable ridges (ji) are placed to support the strings. The strings are sounded by means of plectrums set inside rings, which are placed on the top joints of the thumb, forefinger and middle finger of the player's right hand. Since the bridges can be moved freely beneath the strings, they can be tuned as required.

Following his study of the Tsukushigoto School of Buddhist Koto Music, musician Yasuhashi Kengyo (1614-1685), known as one of the founders of the Edo Period styles of Japanese traditional music, composed several pieces of music for the koto. It was this that led to the instrument gaining widespread popularity throughout Japan.

Among Kengyo's compositions are the solo instrumentals "Rokudan no shirabe" and "Midare Rinzetsu", both of which remain central pieces in the koto repertoire.

Also known as a sangen, this 3-stringed, plucked lute consists of a body covered with animal hide pierced by a long neck. Long tuning pegs (itomaki) are inserted at the top of the neck. There are no frets on the fingerboard. Different pitches are obtained by depressing the strings with the fingertips of the left hand, and the strings are wounded by means of a very large plectrum (bachi) held in the player's right hand.

The shamisen was introduced to Japan during the latter half of the 16^th century from the Kingdom of Ryukyu, where it had earlier been introduced from China. The origins of the instrument though, can be traced back to the saz, a plucked lute employed in Turkish music.

Unlike the saz, which was taken westwards to serve as a prototype of the European lute and guitar, the shamisen was transmitted along the Silk Road and underwent considerable change in the hands of Japanese musicians.

The shakuhachi is a vertical flute consisting of a bamboo tube with four fingerholes on the upper part and one on the lower part of the instrument.

Its origins lie in Central Asia, one precursor being the nay of Iran. The quena, an instrument used in the native music of Latin America, has similar distant ancestors.

The traditional shakuhachi repertoire was intimately associated with Buddhism until the 18^th century. The instrument was actually introduced to Japan from China with Buddhism.

One particularly distinctive feature of shakuhachi performance is the use of the technique known as muraiki, which results in a pitchless sound evoking the noise of the wind.