Playing for survival Blind woman who keeps music alive

Rieko Hirosawa sits on a stone bench outside her home and takes a deep breath. She unleashes an impossibly high note while her bachi plectrum slaps the three strings of her shamisen, a traditional instrument.

- Justin McCurry

Barely a decade has passed since Hirosawa started learning goze uta (blind women's songs) - a genre of music spanning four centuries. That she now plays with the composure of a veteran is remarkable for two reasons: not a single goze uta musical score exists, and even if the chords and notes had been written down, Hirosawa would not be able to read them.

"I knew when I was a young child that I would lose my sight," said Hirosawa at her home in Tomi, Nagano prefecture, the outline of the Japanese Northern Alps in the distance.

But it is because of her condition that the 65-year-old has formed a spiritual bond with the music of the goze -blind and visually impaired women who earned a living as itinerant musicians and who numbered in their hundreds in the late 19th century.

In the north-western prefectures, where the tradition flourished in the Edo period (1603-1868), Hirosawa is at the heart of a movement to protect the legacy of the goze. "They sang songs while they were living really tough lives," she said. "Just surviving was a challenge.