A leading practitioner of the koto, Japan’s national instrument, Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto is an Oakland teacher, performer, composer and filmmaker who has devoted her life to expanding the traditional repertoire through collaborations, arrangements, and new compositions. With the highest teaching credentials from Japan, she was chosen by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts for the inaugural Taproot Fellowship’s recognition of traditional artists and culture bearers across the U.S. Devoted to drawing connections between artistic expression and cultural preservation, she created the 2014 documentary film “Hidden Legacy: Japanese Traditional Performing Arts in the World War II Internment Camps,” a project built on decades of research and created with funds from the National Park Service’s Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program.

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