Suzuki: The Man & His Dream to Teach the Children of the World, by Eri Hotta (Belknap Press, 2022)

—Reviewed by Cathy Ritchie

You’ve probably seen the pictures or viewed the footage: rows upon rows of tiny tots in a field or other wide-open space, sawing away on pint-sized violins, offering anything from “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to a bit of Beethoven. But while you’re cringing (or not), have you ever wondered who started it all? His name was Shinichi Suzuki (1898-1998)—a surname synonymous with a legendary musical “brand.” But how did it all happen?

Eri Hotta offers readers the first substantial biography of the gentleman of Japan whose deep love for humanity, music, and children (not necessarily in that order) guided him firmly through his 100-year life.

Suzuki was one of 12 children born to a violin shop owner. The son helped his father behind the counter, but had no particular passion for his surroundings until, in 1916, he heard a recording of Schubert’s Ave Maria performed by virtuoso Mischa Elman. With financial support from his well-off father and a family friend, teenager Suzuki traveled to Germany for violin instruction. With a new wife in tow, he returned to Japan in 1928 and formed the successful Suzuki Quartet with three of his brothers, though he always felt his own performance abilities to be somewhat lacking. 

In 1931, he joined the faculty of a music conservatory and crossed paths with a 12-year-old violin prodigy whose training had begun at a very young age. Suzuki, who began his own instruction at the much later age of 17, eventually concluded that “the earlier the better” held true when it came to musical exposure and teaching. What’s more, he backed away from the prevailing theory that performance geniuses were a rare commodity created by fate and nature alone. In fact, he came to believe that any child, with the proper encouragement and technical guidance, could master an instrument—or, for that matter, any task in life. From this point on, Suzuki’s guiding mission would be that of so-called talent education.

As much as music was Suzuki’s deepest love in life (along with children, though he never became a father himself), he believed that musical training could be a model for education of all kinds: with patience, innovation, gentleness and flexibility, laced with a modicum of fun and good humor, anything was possible. Suzuki’s modus operandi stood in sharp contrast to the principles behind traditional Japanese pedagogy at that time, which was rigid and more oriented towards test-taking.

Suzuki believed latent talent could always be nurtured, with gradual improvement guaranteed—and that focusing on music itself as a jump-start was the correct path to follow, since “art and culture” would inevitably lead to “moral and intellectual improvement,” according to Hotta. She adds that Suzuki “was not just thinking about violin, but about a much bigger picture,” i.e., perhaps even reshaping and revolutionizing “Japan’s increasingly competitive society.”

However, Suzuki’s unwavering idealism and dreams for his homeland were never to bear total fruit. While the “Suzuki method” eventually became adopted and celebrated worldwide and to a degree in Japan itself (thanks largely to Suzuki’s instructional books, teacher training manuals, and the schools he created and operated), his birth nation became increasingly militarized in his lifetime and less humanist-oriented than he cared to witness. Suzuki’s beloved concept of “talent education” would fall by the wayside in the push to develop more and more playground-age violinists trained to win competitions (which Suzuki always decried). Nevertheless, he drove his vision onward, actively promoting his broader ideas until his death.

As Hotta summarizes: “Suzuki believed that the true value of education lay in doing and being better today than one did yesterday….The kind of humility he proselytized is as admirable as it is hard to find in real life….Suzuki never gave up the struggle, however, and took his convictions to his grave.”

Suzuki is well-written, but I must add a note of “forewarned is forearmed.” Hotta presents a huge amount of Japanese political and economic history as background to her narrative, material which I soon decided to largely skim; just absorbing the copious names she cites was challenge enough. A prefatory list of “Who’s Who” within the book’s opening pages would have been welcome. But this quibble aside, Hotta gives readers a full-bodied portrait of a visionary who sincerely lived his passions in service to others, and never gave up his dream of a kinder, gentler society—filled with the harmonies of some exquisite background music. 

So, come on: let’s hear it for all those tiny tots!