Few instruments are as integral to a nation's traditional culture as Japan's shamisen, whose evocative sound accompanies a range of performances from kabuki and puppet plays to folk songs and geisha entertainments in teahouses.
But in the 21st century, the three-stringed instrument is facing something of an existential crisis amid a backlash over its use of cat and dog skins to cover its body and a decline in craftsmen able to carry on its manufacturing traditions.
Though traditionalists argue that the instrument will never sound the same again if new materials are used, the search for a new covering has been gathering pace over the past 10 years, with the skins of kangaroos or even goat proposed along with synthetic alternatives, according to 63-year-old Sakichi Kineya, a seventh-generation member of a family of shamisen performers.