Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Welcome to the forum!

Ok as far as the material on Komuso and Suizen goes the only English source that I would say is clean and gives accurate facts would be the dissertation called Shakuhachi and Zen written by James H. Sanford. Other than that all the other stuff would be in Japanese.If you can read Japanese the book by Takahashi Kuzan is actually one of the best ressources on the subject. There is also the thesis of Riley Lee that has some pointers to the usage of Shakuhachi in Japanese Buddhism.

Hope this helps.

inasilentway wrote:

Can anyone recommend any shakuhachi and/or Zen books from their studies that contain a fair amount of relevant information? Anything detailing the history and actual practice of shakuhachi as meditation would be helpful.

Hello!

There are also these works:

Eliott Weisgarber: The honkyoku of the Kinko-ryû: some principles of its
organisation", in: Ethnomusicology 12 (1968),

Donald P. Berger: "The Shakuhachi and the Kinko-ryû notation", in: Asian
Music I-2, Autumn 1969.

There is also this article. Sorry I forgot the name of the author:
"The History of the Kyotaku"
Asian Music  Vol. 8.2:47-63 Tibet - East Asia Issue (1977)

These are classical writings on the shakuhachi. You can get them on J-Stor.

Also, a very interesting aspect on the whole issue about suizen is, that this word does not appear in any hitorical documents till the Meiji period, e.g., after the abolition of the Fuke sect. Interesting!

Kiku

Last edited by kikuday (2007-08-29 19:23:42)

One of the best resources on Suizen and the history of the Fuke sect was written by Yuukou Kamisangou,originally published (in Japanese) as liner notes for a recording by Sakai Chikuho and later republished  in "Shichikuron Josetsu" (1995). I translated and edited this essay which forms the last part of my book, "The Shakuhachi, Manaual for Learning." (Ongaku no Tomo-sha, 1986). The book is presently out of print, but I am presently re-writing it and plan to re-publish it by the time of next year's international shakuhachi festival in Sydney (July 4-8, 2008). The book is still availabe in many university and Japan Foundation libraries around the world.
Good luck.

Christopher Yohmei

Here's a very interesting auto-interview on the matter:

http://shakuhachiforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=1302

I have added a shakuhachi reading list to my website. There are also blogs of European summer schools and new MP3s.

Thank you all for your responses. I haven't been online much since my hard drive died (not long after I started this thread), so it took me a while to get around to finding it again. I think I will try to see what I can get for free on JSTOR first, then maybe order one of the books on shakuhachi.com, like Ronnie Seldin's Sui Zen perhaps: http://www.shakuhachi.com/PG-Seldin-SuiZen.html

Many of those books and dissertations are a bit out of my price range, so I'm going to have to limit myself to just one, and try to choose whatever seems like it will be most relevant to my research. However, I'm very grateful for all of your suggestions, and will certainly refer back to this thread when the need arises.

Marek, just so you know the link you provided in the post above seems to be broken.

nomaD43 wrote:

By the way, where in RI are you? Have you been to the Providence Zen Center in Johnston? It has been years since I have sat zazen in that wonderful space, or played Kyorei on the banks of their pond.

I'm in the southern part of RI, near URI, but the state is so small it doesn't make much difference anyway right? The Providence Zen Center is indeed beautiful, I've only been there once, I believe it is in Cumberland though.

ah, my mistake. Should've noticed that. Thanks!