Honoo Taiko, an all-female Japanese taiko drumming troupe from Ishikawa Prefecture, is ready to set the stage ablaze July 12 as they kick off their seven-city world tour in Tokyo.

The three fires igniting Honoo (which means, literally, "flame") comprise 15-year veteran and founding member Akemi Jige, leader Miyuki Ikeda and the group's newest addition, Megumi Syohji, an all-around percussionist.

These women are tough, and show it with their powerful, hard-hitting style. In a recent dress rehearsal open to the press, the team performed several of its original arrangements, starting with Ikeda, solo, on the odaiko. Much of Honoo's drumming is serious and power-based, accompanied by grunts of effort and occasionally enlivened with kakegoe, the drummer's calls that serve as a vocal timekeeping device, which helps keep the members' breathing in sync.

Throughout, the players take turns on a wide variety of instrumentation, drawing on a spectrum of tonal color. The range includes the (bright orange) okedaiko drums, whose tension is controlled by the rope lacings encircling the rim, the high-pitched tsukeshimedaiko and the nagado. They are played with the typical wooden bachi (drumsticks) as well as the long, bamboo takebachi, which produce a sharp slapping sound. Honoo also spices the mixture with chanchiki bells, cymbals and the gong.

In the group's final arrangement, the mood changed dramatically, taking on an air that recalled the taiko's traditional role at the heart of the village matsuri. When featuring the odaiko the performance is often as much theater -- even dance -- as musical performance. The group is at its best when it gives itself permission to smile and joins in its own festival atmosphere. One hopes that Honoo continues to develop and feature more expressive, dancelike movements, as seen when Syohji draws forth a rumble from the gong, then damps it with a full-body embrace.

The trio has extensive international experience, having performed in 13 countries on 18 different occasions, from the Mongolian steppes to Monaco, Senegal and the Atlanta Olympics. Domestically the trio's music has been heard across the archipelago from Hokkaido to Okinawa.

After playing Tokyo, the trio begins its world tour in New York, performing at Carnegie Hall Oct. 12, and from there goes to London, Paris, Shanghai and Sydney before concluding the tour in Nagoya Dec. 3. While overseas, Honoo also aims to promote the 2005 expo planned for Aichi Prefecture, at which they are already scheduled to perform. A CD, which will come out just in time for the kick-off of the overseas leg of the Honoo Taiko tour, is also in the works.

According to Jige, there is no tradition of all-women drumming groups. The school these artists follow is strictly the Honoo school, which, over the past 15 years, they have created from scratch. Contrary to the way of many Japanese art forms, the visual image that the group presents is innovative with a traditional twist. Their stage dress, specially designed by Kosuke Hibino, pairs muscle-revealing halter tops with hakama-inspired skirts.

While taiko is a traditional art, it is also idiosyncratic; drumming has deep roots, but many of its practitioners have not been loyal to one tradition in the same way as performers in many of Japan's other artistic traditions. For drummers, originality has superseded a memorized canon passed down across the centuries. Taiko performers walk a fine line between presenting innovation and the traditional face of Japanese culture whenever they play, particularly when performing overseas.

While a female taiko trio is an original twist, is the sound they make any different musically?

"We don't make that big a deal of the fact that we're an all-female group," says Ikeda. "We're happy if the people who listen to our music take out of it what they want. I think the best thing [for us] is if, each and every time, we are able to use our bodies freely and fully to perform expressively."

With years of daily practice sessions lasting six hours or more, Honoo Taiko has stoked the coals of talent that can ignite an audience's fervor. If they take a deep breath and show their listeners not only the effort, but the pleasure in their creation that has kept them wielding their bachi for so long, they are sure not to disappoint.