I. Tsuruta Kinshi, a satsuma biwa player, talks about her life.

A. Her brother introduced Tsuruta the satuma biwa.

B. Chikuzen biwa, whose sound is softer (according to the announcer) and more elegant (according to Tsuruta),  is much more popular among women.

C. By the age of 11, Tsuruta started performing the biwa as a professional. She made her first recording at the age of 14. She confessed that she skipped her school and practice hard before the recording session.

II. Kwaidan (Shôwa 39, 1964)

A. Was Tsuruta's turning point in her carrer. She suddenly became famous.

B. A composer Takemitsu Tôru was looking for a biwa player for a new movie. He asked a well-known musicologist, Tanabe Hisao. Tanabe mentioned Tsuruta, but Takemitsu did not know of Tsuruta at all and felt uneasy. Takemitsu called another musicologist Kikkawa Eishi. He also recommended Tsuruta. Since both Tanabe and Kikkawa was among the most prominent musicologists in Japan, Takemitsu decided to hire Tsuruta.

C. Takemitsu said, "Complex sounds, such as the sawari sound of the biwa, which the Western people would disregard as noise, fascinated me. Each note has its own complex universe."

D. Tsuruta stayed with Takemitsu while he was composing the music for the film "Kwaidan."

E. Tsuruta once said to Takemitsu, "I want to learn theWestern notation." Takemitsu replied, "That's the last thing I want you to do. I will learn traditional Biwa notation, and you do not have to know the Western notation." Takemitsu thought that it worked very well in that way.

F. Takemitsu also said, "Today, traditional sense of sound is getting extinct, because of the Western tuning and notation systems." According to him, Tsuruta had "pure" sense of Japanese sound, and he wanted to keep it.

III. A brief excerpt from November Steps by Takemitsu Tôru. Tsuruta Kinshi, biwa; Yokoyama Katsuya, shakuhachi; NHK Symphony Orchestra; Naoyuki Iwaki, conductor.

IV. "Dan no Ura," lyrics by Mizuki Yôko (based of the Heike Story); music by Tsuruta Kinshi. A. According to Tsuruta, she experimented with performing parctices. For example, she tried to use broder part of the pluctrum, whereas the traditional satusma biwa uses only the edge of it.