Honjo Oiwake National Competition

I recently started learning Honjo Oiwake on the shamisen. It's quite a difficult song to play, but it's known to be one of the most difficult songs to sing! And there is a National competition every year in Honjo. Myself and Paul, one of the new ALTs went to check it out. I was unsure of exactly what kind of competition it was.

We arrived at 9am just in time for the start, which opened with about 10 shamisen players playing some really cool song. And after the opening ceremony was finished the competition started.

A short version of the song was played, by the musicians who opened the ceremony, and singers came out with their numbers on and sang the song. Then the next person came out and sang, then the next...


By 11:30 we had seen nearly 70 versions of the exact same song!! We decided to leave early. The competition actually continued until 5:30. Perhaps next year I'll go to the second half of the competition and see if anything exciting happens near the end!


It seemed quite strange to have a competition with only one song. I don't think that would happen in other countries, I imagine people wouldn't have patience to sit in a room for a whole day listening to the same song.