The shamisen (Photo: Claire Taylor)

(Writer: Neil White)
The bachi is the most obvious difference with musical tools beyond Japanese shores; a form of oversized plectrum many times heavier than anything similar used for any other form of musical instrument and is made of ivory - traditionally - or more often in recent years, of plastic and is not unlike a large flat plastic spatula in shape.

The body of the shamisen is almost square in appearance and is produced using the hides of cats, sometimes dogs - still today. Look closely and you may even see the nipples of the animals on the main body of the instrument. Traditionalists prefer these materials although some people are now using various forms of paper.

Even the music, as it appears on paper is in unusual form given that it uses numbers that correlate to the position of the hands on the neck of the shamisen rather than traditional musical notes. The string to be plucked with the bachi is shown by the position of the numbers on the three lines of the shamisen score.