Midwest Buddhist Temple Taiko

The group started in 1977 based upon Buddhistic principals after the model of Kinnara Taiko in Los Angeles.

At the end of World War II, Chicago attracted Japanese American workers with job opportunities.

In 1944, Reverend Gyodo Kono started the Midwest Buddhist Temple as Japanese Americans were released from the World War II relocation camps.

Eventually, many immigrants began to move back to the West Coast and to the suburbs as seen in temple demographics, for there was no Japantown or Little Tokyo in Chicago.

In the mid-1970s, Johnny Mori and George Abe of Kinnara Taiko taught members of Midwest Buddhist Temple how to make drums with barrels and car jacks.

For performances today, they use any combination of four odaiko (thirty-gallon), six jozuke (fifteen-gallon), four shime-daiko (from Japan, tightened with bolts, not ropes), and a mixture of kane, chappa, binzasara and two conch shells (a Pacific Triton and an East Coast shell), as well as a mixture of old drums used for practice and workshops.

All members have the opportunity to teach a piece if they have expertise in it, and arrangements are considered a democratic group effort.

The Midwest Buddhist Temple taiko group performs at commercial events, business conferences, bars, nightclubs, and different ethnic fairs.

The group has also taken in members as young as the ages of thirteen and fourteen if they were siblings of existing players.