Opening with a dramatic onstage performance, the kanji character for woman emblazoned on a huge drum, Dawn Mikkelson and Keri Pickett thrust viewers into the world of contemporary Japanese taiko in their heartwarming cross-cultural documentary, “Finding Her Beat.” Although it sometimes feels repetitive and would benefit from stronger emotional peaks, it provides a fascinating look into what taiko means literally and symbolically for women engaged in the art practice, regardless of background. On the whole, the movie engages through the juxtaposition of themes that the directors reveal more than the arc of the film itself.
“Finding Her Beat” screened at San Diego Asian Film Festival Spring Showcase
For the uninitiated, the beginning provides some contextual background to taiko by explaining how it moved from cultural unit to performance art in the aftermath of World War II, in large part due to Western influence and the commercialization of religious and cultural practice. As such, taiko became a form of drumming that was no longer just performed at ceremonies, but also as a performance — spawning careers as a result.
“Finding Her Beat” follows a group of women from around the world, although primarily from the United States and Japan, who join together to put on a one-of-a-kind taiko show with all women performers in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. This is depicted as particularly revolutionary as taiko was traditionally limited to men as drummers and carries with it a patriarchal legacy. Mikkelson and Pickett creatively deconstruct this by centering the story around Jennifer Weir and Megan Chao Smith, a same-sex American couple who lead and drive this concert, HERbeat, presented by TaikoArts Midwest. Over the course of the film, Weir, Chao Smith, and others prepare rigorously for the show while faced with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020. The women create unbreakable connections and share their lives that together start from taiko but extend into far deeper emotional territory.
The film goes beyond a story of women empowerment, which is already evident in the presentation of the taiko concert. Between intensive practice sessions and group meals, some of the story's beautiful mundanity lies in scenes of airport pickups and Target runs, where these women who share so much through taiko but are meeting for the first time, become instantly bonded. “Finding Her Beat” also interrogates the idea of authenticity in cultural performance, questioning tradition in a society as tradition-oriented as Japan. For instance, the directors highlight the now-famous blended taiko-dance form known as Hana Hachijo, created by Kojima as a way to defy expectations on what taiko is, can be, and should be.
Taiko is presented as a form of gender deconstruction, with women like Chieko Kojima, who stood up against cultural norms in 1980s Japan to pursue a boundary-breaking career in the art form. By taking on these careers reserved for men, Japanese women thus broke away from their roles as simply appendages to men through physical and limb-centric performance. The film is also uniquely queer-coded in the narratives the directors choose to center as well as the documentary subjects themselves, something of which is unclear whether this is specific to the story and the HERbeat performers or is also a trend in taiko writ large. Interestingly, Mikkelson said that even the crew of the film, which was composed almost entirely of women, identified as either “queer, Minnesota-based, Asian and Asian American,” which was meant to echo the impulse behind the performance.
The work is gently underscored by a muted orchestral soundtrack by Me-Lee Hay, while its diegetic sound through taiko drumming punctuates performance scenes. The power of taiko as a musical motif could have been used more liberally throughout the film, given how moving it is already in the opening sequence. Nonetheless, one of the strengths of the work is the care that the directors take in depicting the sheer physicality of taiko performance. From beads of sweat, saliva peeling from the mouths of performances, and all four limbs pulsing and moving to the music, the filmmakers make clear that taiko is a truly visceral, embodied art form. Shots of feet and hands make clear that it is an all-body performance art, much more than simply the sound or even the visuals that audiences see onstage.
The final onscreen text mentions that “Finding Her Beat recognizes the power and talent of all drummers of marginalized genders.” By doing so, Mikkelson and Pickett quietly acknowledge a subtle unspoken part of the film, which is the centering of the gender binary by calling the concert “HERbeat,” including the pronoun “her” in the title of the work, and placing so much emphasis on “women” without attention to the exclusion this unintentionally creates. The film never feels exclusionary, but this potential marginalization is slowly brought into question over the course of the narrative as a work that places so much emphasis on showing taiko unbound and in a setting that rejects heteropatriarchal tradition. Regardless, “Finding Her Beat” remains an insightful look into an influential art form that also defies a false and frequently misconstrued binary between tradition and modernity, featuring interesting subjects that viewers will quickly warm to and root for all the way through.
