We delighted to announce that now have confirmation from Kazami Ranki that he will be our star performer at the Festival. The lead-in will be four days of master classes by Kazami commencing Monday, 1 October. Having organised and attended his first series in April, I can tell you that it was extremely well received by the students and his approach to tying refreshingly different. Don’t take my word for it, ask the others who were on the course. The classes will be booked separately to the Festival and, based on previous experience of classes by visiting kinbakushi of his stature, they will sell out almost overnight. If you want to take this rare opportunity, you had better keep an eye out here to find out when they go on sale.
LFAJRB itself will start on Friday 5 October and finish Monday evening on 8 October. Now the uncertainty over the date is settled, we can start planning in earnest. We have already started drawing up a list of ‘likely suspects’ for performers and presenters. As I have mentioned elsewhere, we have decided to give more exposure to non-Japanese artists this year since they were somewhat under-represented last year due to the honour of having both Kinoko and Kazami, with the bonus of the Ichinawa-kai team; a total of 19 including models. I’m certain that the west has never seen the like and we are proud to have brought it to you. However, I think everyone, including our Japanese visitors, has been amazed by the progress in the west. Only a few years ago, there were only a handful of western riggers who could put on a show worth watching. Almost every time I see even our local riggers, I am constantly astounded by the skill levels and the speed of progress. I know some that have reached professional performance level in as little as 6 months. That is not to make light of it, each of those months has been filled with obsessive study and practice. I doubt I’m alone in feeling the new generation snapping at our heels! The point is that there are some first rate western riggers who deserve to be seen and this year we will make sure that happens. Some while back, I posed the question on a forum asking whether there might come a day when the top kinbakushi was a westerner. That question seems to becoming less facetious by the day. It might not be any day soon. Mind you, it is worth considering that we don’t seem to win at that quintessentially English game of cricket very often. We laughed at the first Japanese motorcycles to come into the UK…