Instrumental revivals can crop up in unlikely places: the power-house behind the current taiko craze – mushrooming on every continent – is to be found on the ruggedly windswept island of Sado in the Sea of Japan. In medieval times, Sado was a place of exile to which shoguns consigned their political enemies, one of whom was the fourteenth-century dramatist Zeami Motokiyo, the father of Noh theatre. ‘When I go there,’ said the Japanese director Yukio Ninagawa, as he presented The Tempest as a Noh rehearsal on Sado, ‘I hear the voices of the dead.’

Sado is beautiful in summer, but in winter it’s a desolate place whose inhabitants scratch a meagre living from fishing and rice-growing. Since labouring in the paddy-fields holds no charms for the young, they now routinely migrate to the mainland cities. Yet young people of a different, somewhat masochistic stamp are queuing up to enrol for a two-year taiko drumming apprenticeship on Sado, and are ready to endure rigours reminiscent of a Siberian penal colony to do so.

Fancy starting your day at 6.00am with a six-kilometre run up and down a steep mountain path – no rests allowed, and no walking, in all weathers including snow? Thereafter your day will be rigidly timetabled, with relentless drilling on drums interspersed with intensive training in a wide range of performance arts, until you tumble into bed from exhaustion at 10.00pm. There’s no TV in your dormitory, and you’re not allowed to smoke, drink alcohol, or have sex. And how are your woodwork skills? You’ll need some, because you must fashion your own drumsticks from the hardwood block you’re given at the outset. And will you miss your mobile? There’s just one landline shared with everyone else which you’re allowed to use when you feel a bit lonesome and want to call home. Residents at Her Majesty’s prisons have it cushy in comparison.

Kodo is the name of the company which these apprentices – now increasingly female – hope to join after they graduate, but with a mandatory probationary year, followed by a further weeding-out, most don’t make the final cut. Although it’s by no means the only professional company focusing on taiko drumming, Kodo is the best-known internationally.