Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

In the bookstore today I noticed that Yamamoto Hozan has a new book out, modestly entitled "Yamamoto Hozan: Hito to take" (hito = person/people, to = and, take = bamboo). In Japanese, of course, but it's never too early to start writing the publishers and asking politely when the translation will be out.

I didn't have time to do more than flip through it, but it looks like it'd be of interest to a lot of people here. In particular there are a couple dozen pages under the heading "improvisation" and a section containing in-depth discussion of some of the highlights of his discography. He doesn't go into much technical detail but he has just done so damn much (jazz, bossa nova, free improv, modern "classical") that what I read did keep my interest, e.g. some surprising comments about freedom vs restraint and jazz vs traditional music (honkyoku/sankyoku) in the context of Ginkai, the album he cut in the 70s with Gary Peacock, Murakami Hiroshi and Kikuchi Masabumi.