Two extraordinary geniuses, Natsuho Murata and Himari, emerged simultaneously in Japan. Since discovering them on New Year’s Eve 2020, I have continued to follow both of them.
The 2024 Noto Charity Concert brought me back to classical music concerts, and through Chausson’s Poème in the spring of 2025 and the video of the Rome recital on November 22, 2025, I came to recognize once again the extraordinary magnitude of Natsuho’s talent.
This essay discusses the difference in the way Himari and Natsuho are treated, the political dynamics of deciding whom to promote and through what narrative, and the proposition that, in the art of music, it is ultimately resonance itself that tells the truth.
2026-03-13
Only resonance tells the truth.
As I have mentioned many times before, on New Year’s Eve 2020, I discovered on YouTube that two extraordinary geniuses, Natsuho Murata and Himari, had emerged simultaneously in Japan.
In March 2024, I learned that Natsuho would appear at the Noto Charity Concert held at Hamarikyu Asahi Hall, and I attended as a member of the audience.
This became the occasion that brought me back, after a long absence, to attending classical music concerts as a listener.
My closest friend and I always say, “It is all thanks to Natsuho.”
There are two ladies and one gentleman whom I repeatedly encountered at Natsuho’s concerts and with whom I became very close.
I have also exchanged LINE contact information with the two ladies.
On March 6, one of those ladies sent me a message informing me that Himari would appear, or was scheduled to appear, on Hodo Station.
That was because I had previously told her that I felt tremendous righteous indignation over the current circumstances in which Himari and Natsuho find themselves.
While Himari was performing with the London Philharmonic, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Natsuho, for example, was performing in 2025 at Musashino Civic Cultural Hall in a concert with a ticket price of 1,200 yen.
The fact that Himari went to study at Curtis and received instruction from an elderly woman who is also a world-renowned teacher must undoubtedly have been extremely beneficial for her.
Indeed, she became very much better.
Natsuho and Himari are Nagashima and Oh.
From the perspective that the emergence, like a galaxy of brilliant stars, of similarly gifted geniuses represented by these two is Japan itself, and the very tradition of Japan, they are Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon.
The existence of two geniuses in the same era is a supreme blessing for the Japanese music world.
That said, there was a period when even I began to feel somewhat concerned.
Around precisely that time, Natsuho changed instruments, moving from the Amati she had previously been using to a Gennaro Gagliano 1765 loaned to her by the REI collection.
At the end of March and on April 1, 2025, she performed Chausson’s Poème at Suntory Small Hall and Yokohama Minato Mirai Small Hall, using the Amati.
It was an unprecedented and unsurpassable performance.
Whenever I go to a classical music concert, I make it a rule to listen to the works on the program beforehand as preparation.
After all, the speakers in the living room of my home are Pioneer Exclusive EW302s.
I connect them to a Yamaha amplifier using audio-dedicated speaker cables as thick as chains, and listen directly to YouTube.
As audio enthusiasts will know, the sense of presence is comparable to listening in a concert hall.
When I learned that Natsuho would perform Chausson, a work that I myself was hearing for the first time, I became slightly uneasy.
That was because the content of this work itself is extremely complex.
So, more thoroughly than usual, I listened to almost every performance of the work available on YouTube by some of the greatest virtuosos in history.
At Suntory Small Hall, I sat in the center of the second row.
In Yokohama, I sat in the center of the front row.
It was an unprecedented and unsurpassable performance that no longer required explanation—and indeed could not be explained.
After all, she had surpassed Heifetz, Neveu, and the other legendary virtuosos of world history whom I had listened to in preparation.
After that, she changed instruments in August.
Even though she had produced such an unbelievable performance on the Amati, I also had the needless worry of wondering whether everything would be all right.
In any case, the difference in the way Natsuho and Himari were being treated was simply too extreme.
So I thought that, if things had come to this, I had no choice but to hear Himari’s sound with my own ears.
Nevertheless, every one of her concerts sells out instantly.
I genuinely felt that participating in that sort of competition to obtain tickets was ridiculous, so I tried it only once, but I became not merely astonished but angry.
Even an hour after ticket sales began, I could not get through by telephone.
I kept calling and finally got through, only to be told that everything was sold out.
It was no different whatsoever from a scramble for tickets to an idol group mobbed by fad-following fans.
Since then, attending a Himari concert had never even entered my mind.
But this year, when I learned that she would perform with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, I decided that this would be the occasion on which I would hear her from the center of the front row.
The price was 25,000 yen.
Moreover, unless I became an NHK Symphony season subscriber, it appeared unlikely that I would be able to obtain the seat I wanted.
So I decided that, even if it meant becoming a subscriber for three consecutive concerts, I would purchase my desired seat on the first day of ticket sales.
I had also told the aforementioned lady about the circumstances leading up to this.
However, I had not told her that I had subsequently abandoned that plan—that is, that it had become unnecessary and pointless.
That was why I received the message mentioned earlier.
On March 6, I went to bed at 9:20 p.m. and woke at 4:20 a.m. the following morning, March 7.
Because I was planning to take a Shinkansen in the seven o’clock hour, I did not notice her message at all.
The reason I came to know that there was no need for me to go to hear Himari with the NHK Symphony was that the organizing body had uploaded to YouTube the complete video of the recital to which Natsuho had been invited in Rome on November 22, 2025.
It is the concert from that day, lasting more than an hour.
She had completely mastered the Gennaro Gagliano 1765 and made it entirely her own.
As one would expect, she is a violinist of the very highest, extraordinary caliber—a violinist of the century.
I believe that her previous Amati was the finest possible instrument for producing delicate resonance.
But in terms of the sheer volume of sound resonating throughout a hall, it may still have lacked something.
The Gennaro Gagliano 1765 has that.
I became convinced that the sensation I had first experienced on New Year’s Eve 2020 had been correct.
At that moment, I felt that there was no longer any need for me to go all the way to Tokyo and, on top of that, pay 25,000 yen × 3 merely to hear Himari.
If anyone were to find fault with Natsuho’s performance in Rome on November 22, 2025, that person would be a genuine good-for-nothing.
I have introduced Beethoven’s words several times in this column.
“Music is the supreme art, above all other arts……”
Those words were, of course, spoken in an age when cinema did not exist, but even so, I believe Beethoven was right.
When I use the term “good-for-nothing” here, it is a term of abuse directed at those who make their living from art while, in reality, living within political narratives.
The following is an exchange with a well-known AI.
“As you say, the difference in the way HIMARI and Ms. Murata are treated is not a difference in ability, but is instead the result of extremely political dynamics concerning ‘who is to be marketed, and through what kind of narrative (story).’”
One reason I failed to notice the lady’s email of March 6 is that, since August 2014, and particularly in recent years, I have watched virtually no television news programs produced by the old media.
I occasionally watch NHK when I need to verify something, and even then I only glance at it obliquely.
The self-denigrating view of history and anti-Japanese ideology implanted by GHQ.
Their behavior as sufferers of infantile leftism.
Perhaps that is precisely why: how could I possibly look directly at the news programs of the old media, almost all of whose people have fallen victim to Chinese honey traps and money traps?
The difference in the treatment of Natsuho and Himari.
On this matter as well, I hold TV Asahi in profound contempt.
It is no exaggeration to say that they do not possess even the slightest qualification to speak about art.
I no longer have any need to conceal this.
Nor am I any longer a businessman who must devote himself to modesty, and so I have spoken directly in this column.
I was born in postwar Japan having been endowed with a mind belonging to the realm called genius.
At one of Japan’s leading preparatory schools, I had been commanded to go on to Kyoto University and carry responsibility on both shoulders, but my life came to an end the moment my third year of high school began.
I had listened to it even before then, but from that point onward, I spent every day, from morning until night, listening to classical music on NHK-FM.
Every week I bought magazines such as Weekly FM, constantly making off-air recordings as I listened.
I have absolutely no interest in speaking about music in a pedantic manner like Hideo Kobayashi, Hidekazu Yoshida, or Haruki Murakami, who imitated them.
As readers know, what I have said about art has always been extremely simple.
Painting is line and color.
Photography is composition.
The novel is style.
Music is resonance.
That is all.
I listen to the resonance produced by true geniuses and true masters.
It is solely for that purpose that I go to concerts.
And there is something else of which I have become even more convinced.
Classical music is at its finest when heard in concert.
To be continued.