When did we start saying that we were so "busy"? When we were kids, there was always plenty of time. One day lasted a long time.It felt like the summer vacations would never end. Deep forests, rice paddies and brooks. Childhood friends calling me out to play. These are landscapes beautifully etched in my memory, a nostalgia of a time long gone.

When listening to the "Furusato" (Old Home) played by Mizuyo Komiya, longing for time past and a sweet sad resignation started to flicker within my heart like sunlight sifting through the trees.

The instrument Komiya plays in this CD is a 25 stringed "Sou", a modern solo instrument recreated from the traditional 13 stringed Sou. With the paulownia wood forming a smooth slope with rows of beautiful bridge stops on the top supporting the strings, the Sou is a classic instrument that brings tradition into our lives and is something that serves as a bridge to a world, introducing new sounds.

SOU produces plenty of fresh, pure sounds but it is also able to create many curious sounds that catch your attention and tug at the heart. Let's listen to these sounds. There is, for an instance, the faint "creaking" sounds that are created when the ivory nails hit the strings. There are also subtle sounds that are created when traditional technique called "oshite" (pushing) is applied to the chords to change the pitch.

What can be called "shadows of sounds" particular to the Sou are found in these recorded pieces, scattered like so much particles and quietly bursting open. Soliloquies and sighs of the people past, people singing children to sleep with songs that tell of the hard and painful lives they had led. The thin lights of the fireflies' trails. The sounds of the wind blowing through the bamboo grass fields. Tones of the Sou are tones that have been soaked up from people's hearts and those from Nature.