It was a while ago, but back in October I went to a Taiko concert. Now since this was performed by community groups, it definitely wasn't the pinnacle of Taiko, but some of the performances were definitely impressive and some of the songs pretty challenging. That said, you could also tell me not to discount the concert just because it was amateurs performing - it's a look into the musical hobbies of people in Japan.
To get some foreign words out of the way, Taiko refers to music played in a drum ensemble of often 10-20 people. Drums can range from as small as a piccolo snare drum to the size of a Smart car. And the word Taiko can probably be used to label one of these drums, though there's probably specific terminology that I don't know about yet used to name each and every size drum.
What I really walked away from the concert with is the realization that significantly more than most music I've seen performed, Taiko is as much a visual spectacle as it is a musical one. Take for example how people who play the largest drums often take as long as two beats to wind up for a single strike. I liked how that gesture communicated a sense of power. Another visual spectacle that several groups used was the playing of a single drum by three people. In one situation, one person would play a pattern for a measure or two before moving to the side to let another person take his place and play the same pattern. In this fashion they would rotate between the three of them and after doing this for a while, increase the frequency at which they changed who actually played the drum.
Although this image is generally a bit blurry, you can still see how much the performers wind-up to strike some of the larger drums.
And here's a short video where you can see some of the grandeur that people portray during performances.
