It began with my mother.

Holding my outstretched finger, she helped me tap out a tune, and never lost patience in the repetition.

I do not recall the melody. Perhaps it was The Skye Boat Song from school; or her party piece, Santa Lucia; or maybe All Kinds Of Everything, the first Irish Eurovision winner.

The memory of a six-year-old is a fairground mirror.

My father would arrive in to monitor progress. Standing in appreciation behind my back, from time to time he would utter ‘No!’ as I hit the wrong note or rhythm; although, being tone deaf, he was unable to offer a solution.

In this way, andante andante, my music education advanced.

There were no staves or time signatures to that early learning; no pressure or competitions. Music was a part of what made me happy. It entered through my ears and expressed itself by hand and voice.

I spent hours alone, in the front room, picking out melodies, harmonies and chords on our family keyboard. The playing was rough, imprecise, wobbly; but also flexible.

Although I do not consider myself a pianist, I deeply love the piano. It has helped me relax, create, discover, entertain and commiserate throughout my life.

It is the spirit of home.

***

In that first swing-a-cat place of mine in Strasbourg, I rented a ‘Joanna’ which they kindly dragged up six flights. Piano-movers are a sweaty breed apart. I would like, once, to go to their Christmas party. I expect they play only heavy metal.

Later, in Jeddah, an upright arrived into my life, and I shipped it on to the UK, and then to Vienna and Zurich, as the rovings of career played out.

Neighbours haven’t always loved my music-led soirées. I’ve been accused of running a piano bar by one; another called the police on me; several have thumped the walls.

But that which repels also attracts.

I recall making friends with Thomas, my neighbour in Austria, by sharing a beer over a few songs in my place. We continued those steins in his rooftop apartment, where he showed me how to scale a climbing wall he had installed.

Stéphanie, my neighbour in Strasbourg, used to come to my place across the corridor. One night she met my Dutch friend Fred during a singsong, and they eventually got married.

I am today the godfather of Mélanie, whose parents met around my French piano.

***

In 2005, having returned to Dublin, I bought a second-hand Kawai which had been shipped in from Japan. This baby grand has been part of my life for two decades, and daily tolerates a little melody picking and chord bashing.

Like many of the things we love most, I take those 88 keys for granted. Until this year, when travelling in Japan, it occurred to me that I should drop by Bethlehem.

****

During the 1910s, Koichi Kawai learnt his craft at Yamaha, in Hamamatsu, Japan. Mr Kawai was an engineer, obsessed by the efficiency of the hammer mechanism which is the piano’s secret forte.

When old-man-Yamaha died, and the corporation continued to diversify away from music, Koichi grasped his opportunity. In 1927, he broke away and created a new company, called Kawai Musical Instruments Research Laboratory. His intention was to perfect the hammer mechanism, and in so doing, offer supreme confidence to performers.

The business he founded is now the third-largest producer of pianos in the world.

***

Speaking to the Kawai lady by phone, I assumed I would be trailing behind a Japanese tour group, plucking through the various stages of an instrument’s construction with an English translation stuck in my ear.

As it happened, I was Yui’s only visitor, and the visit fell on Japan’s National Culture Day. The country was on holiday, but the Kawai craftworks would produce 60 instruments, like every other day. Each is made to order, and despatched around the world.

I asked Yui about the most important markets for Kawai.

‘China has been our most important destination over the last ten years’, she said, ’but it’s full of pianos now’.

The explanation was so full of charm, I did not enquire further. But in my imagination, I saw the banks of the Yangtze River, bursting with keys, legs and strings, as it tried feverishly to disgorge the glut of ebony and ivory invading the nation.

***

There is high security in the Kawai Factory in Hamamatsu which wanted written assurances that I did not work for a competitor. Phones and cameras are not allowed into the working space.

Music is serious business.

500 people are employed where the unique and famous sound-colour of a Kawai is produced – ‘rounded, with a bright treble and exquisite action’.

Metal and woods are neatly organised about the vast space they name the ‘factory in the woods’, in reference to the trees which guard the site.

As we walk in, a morning break ends with the sounding of a musical jingle across the floor. This is followed by the placing down of smartphones and the taking up of tools. The jingle is organ music – not piano. It is a detail I find difficult to shake.

The Japanese obsession with refined systems is much in evidence. People dart about, each focused on a task.

In advance of my visit, I had sent Yui the serial number of my piano in Howth.

‘We manufactured your piano here in the Spring of 1987’, she announced, reading from her notes, and with some fanfare.

I was in the fourth year of university then, preparing for my finals and writing my thesis. I too was building, tuning, retuning.

As we walk through the facility, people in white overalls pass us from time to time. Most are young and sprightly. But now and again, a wizened older man appears. And I think: you, sir, were surely here. Perhaps you helped to craft the instrument sitting in my home?

‘Each instrument is its own personality’, Yui says, as we watch stringers do their job in a fantasy of physicality like that expressed in the Anvil Chorus. Standing outside their soundproofed environment, I observed as they put 250 metres of strings in place on a black grand.

Once stringed, a piano is tuned five times before it is shipped. This most precious task is undertaken by the MPA – the Master Piano Artisan. These professionals are venerated at Kawai for their sensitive expertise. They work alone, in soundproofed environments, plucking and adjusting.

I stand and stare at one lady as she tunes her instrument. It is a physical enterprise. At one stage she is shimmying underneath to adjust a detail. At another, she sits with the entire string assembly resting on her lap as she reaches and tunes; again and again.

***

‘Thank you for returning to the place your piano was born’, Yui said, as we completed the tour, and she allowed me drift among the various instruments from different periods of Kawai’s history.

I sat at several and played some chords for my own amusement. From the wall, a portrait of the proud father of Kawai stared at me. Under Koichi’s portrait were four simple words.

‘Let your life resound’.