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Taiwan festival in Tokyo to kick off with concerts, forums

  • Date:2016-06-11~2016-07-10
Taiwan festival in Tokyo to kick off with concerts, forums

The Taiwan Cultural Center in Tokyo will host a month-long series of cultural events to celebrate its one-year anniversary of relocating to the Toranomon district.


The Center was first inaugurated as the Taipei Cultural Center in 2010 and operated through the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Tokyo. After relocating to a new site by Toranomon Hills, the Center functions as a direct liaison between the Ministry of Culture and Japan's cultural authorities.


To offer a sample of Taiwan's creative energy, the 2016 Taiwan Culture Festival in Tokyo this June will feature large-scale concerts, a creative bazaar offering lifestyle products, contemporary art exhibitions, and film screenings.


The opening concert will have a merry lineup of popular Taiwanese bands such as FireEX. (滅火器), CosmosPeople (宇宙人), Aphasia (阿飛西雅), and The Queen Suitcase (皇后皮箱). Additional performances will be made by aboriginal Amis singer Chalaw (查勞) and Hakka artist Ayugo Huang (黃連煜) as well.


Corresponding music forums will also feature Freddy Lim (林昶佐), lead vocalist of death metal group Chthonic (閃靈), Landy Chang (張培仁), CEO of digital music platform StreetVoice.tw, and Chang43 (張四十三), founder of indie label TCM (角頭音楽).


A collection of shellac records, which predates vinyl by half a century, will also be played on a wind-up record player to share the music of 1930s Taiwan. A corresponding introduction to early Taiwanese ballads will be made by none other than Jutoupi (朱頭皮), rapper-singer member of the New Taiwanese Nativist Music movement (新台語歌運動) in the 1990s.


The month-long festival will also include a special screening of "Wawa no Cidal (太陽的孩子),” a searching and moving drama following the struggle of an indigenous Amis community in Taiwan in response to the urban development of their land and the gentrification of their traditions.


Find out more about the 2016 Taiwan Culture Festival in Tokyo at jp.taiwan.culture.tw.


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