Janet Pocorobba¡¯s ¡°The Fourth String¡± reconfigures the typical Japan fish-out-of-water memoir into a meditation on music and mastery, relationships, culture and narrative. Pocorobba was 28 years old when she and her then-boyfriend arrived in Japan in the late ¡®90s to teach English.
A talented musician, Pocorobba was drawn to an English advertisement offering free shamisen lessons, an instrument she¡¯d never played before. Thus started her lifelong relationship with the shamisen and her teacher, ¡°Sensei¡± ¡ª though Sensei never accepted that title for herself. Offering free lessons to non-Japanese, Sensei rejected teaching native students or teaching for money as a way to subvert the strict, hierarchical systems within the traditional Japanese arts, only offering a vague explanation to Pocorobba, it¡¯s ¡°complicated.¡±
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