Selections from Nurtured by Love

For more than three decades, Kyoko Selden was deeply involved in the Talent Education (Sainō kyōiku) movement, as a parent of three string-playing children and the translator of major books and articles on the Suzuki Method. Developed in the thirties and forties by the violinist Suzuki Shin'ichi (1898-1998), the Suzuki Method teaches children classical music as a means to enrich their lives while also enhancing their motor skills, concentration, memory, and self-discipline. Suzuki, who had studied the violin in Germany in the twenties, was one day struck by the capacity of children to master their native languages. Against the conventional wisdom that only certain people were graced with the talent to master musical instruments, Suzuki declared that anyone who could speak a language with facility had the potential to become a refined performer—whether amateur or professional—of music.