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#1 2007-04-26 17:39:10

Alex
Member
From: Barcelona - Spain
Registered: 2005-10-17
Posts: 138

Komuso

Hello everybody,

I was sitting down, blowing the shakuhachi and I thought I about asking you people a couple of questions that just popped to my mind and for which I dont have any answers (vaya, I hope that makes some sense in English!)

Anyway, could someone tell me , first, how many pieces did a Komuso or any kind of monk who used Shakuhachi as a meditative tool usually knew and played regularly, and second, where did they get the Shakuhachi? I was speculating that maybe they learned to make them by themselves or there was one, specially skilled monk, who made for himself and others, I guess in any case they were quite rough.

Well, thanks to all for reading,  hope you are all well

Salud!

Alex


"An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he's "at" somewhere. You always have to realise that you are constantly in the state of becoming. And as long as you can stay in that realm, you'll sort of be all right"
Bob Dylan

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#2 2007-04-27 08:41:52

Tairaku 太楽
Administrator/Performer
From: Tasmania
Registered: 2005-10-07
Posts: 3226
Website

Re: Komuso

Alex wrote:

Hello everybody,

I was sitting down, blowing the shakuhachi and I thought I about asking you people a couple of questions that just popped to my mind and for which I dont have any answers (vaya, I hope that makes some sense in English!)

Anyway, could someone tell me , first, how many pieces did a Komuso or any kind of monk who used Shakuhachi as a meditative tool usually knew and played regularly, and second, where did they get the Shakuhachi? I was speculating that maybe they learned to make them by themselves or there was one, specially skilled monk, who made for himself and others, I guess in any case they were quite rough.

Well, thanks to all for reading,  hope you are all well

Salud!

Alex

Hi Alex,

Some komuso (specifically Jinbo Masanosuke (sp.?), composer of the hit 'Jinbo Sanya') are reputed to have played only one honkyoku..............but that's highly improbable. Both Myoan Taizan Ha and Kinko Ryu have a number of honkyoku in the 30's, maybe that's a reasonable number.

As far as the flutes are concerned. I have some komuso flutes which are very fine and well made. In fact my most ornate and crafted shakuhachi is an Edo Komuso 2.1 which is in tune and has a beautiful sound. But I've seen some other ones that were pretty rough. And yes they usually made their own.


'Progress means simplifying, not complicating' : Bruno Munari

http://www.myspace.com/tairakubrianritchie

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#3 2007-04-27 09:14:57

amokrun
Member
From: Finland
Registered: 2006-08-08
Posts: 413

Re: Komuso

Tairaku wrote:

Some komuso (specifically Jinbo Masanosuke (sp.?), composer of the hit 'Jinbo Sanya') are reputed to have played only one honkyoku..............but that's highly improbable. Both Myoan Taizan Ha and Kinko Ryu have a number of honkyoku in the 30's, maybe that's a reasonable number.

Do you happen to have any idea where that rumor originates from? I've heard the same thing about komuso playing only one piece or in the most extreme cases just one sound over and over. I can't remember where I heard that but it seemed somewhat unlikely to me.

Tairaku wrote:

As far as the flutes are concerned. I have some komuso flutes which are very fine and well made. In fact my most ornate and crafted shakuhachi is an Edo Komuso 2.1 which is in tune and has a beautiful sound. But I've seen some other ones that were pretty rough. And yes they usually made their own.

I'm rather curious. How well do the crude flutes that were made by the players themselves play in general? I like the idea of making your own flute and growing with it but it would seem that it's hard to just make one for yourself and somehow get it right. We have people on this forum making flutes with all the modern tools available and it still takes a good while to produce one that roughly works.

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#4 2007-04-27 14:25:39

-Prem
Member
From: The Big Apple
Registered: 2007-03-27
Posts: 73

Re: Komuso

I would imagine that many old flutes did not play all that great according to todays demands from a shakuhachi, but they played fine for the music that they were playing at the time. FUKE shakuhachi of which Myoan is an offshoot (no one knows what the people sounded like back then) was not all that technically demanding as the current style of shakuhachi. Thus they did not demand a lot from the flutes. I would also imagine that if they were in fact shakuhachi playing MONKS, shakuhachi was not the focus of their lives as it is for MUSICIANS of today so any shakuhachi was in fact "fine". But of course just as in any craft there were those that focused more energy into the instrument/music and changed it/developed it. We are talking like 800 years of development! A lot can happen.

From what I understand, Ken could probably shed more light on this, it does not take all that much to make a playable flute. Not a GOOD flute but a PLAYABLE flute. Also, I know Tairaku has had a lot of experience playing a huge variety of shakuhachi(many Myoan/edo shakuhachi). I am wondering how many actually play all that well given todays demands.

On my trip to Japan last summer I met an old-school Myoan player(playing for 50+ years) who made his own shakuhachi. Through him and others I came to find out that this tradition is still alive and kicking in Japan. It was kind of interesting to find that it is not such a big deal there as it is here in USA. The flutes usually are not great (by current standards)but they serve the purpose just fine. So given that, they are great!

-Prem

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#5 2007-04-30 04:38:06

Alex
Member
From: Barcelona - Spain
Registered: 2005-10-17
Posts: 138

Re: Komuso

Hi there!

One honkyoku?!! That s a serious thought! It must take a really disciplined mind to play the same piece almost exclusively over the years. I guess that would fall within the "Shugyo" practice that Nyokai mentions in his "tips section", true discipline and purposelessness. 

I've read there are 36 pieces in the Kinko repertoire but I assumed they were pieces people learned just to keep the lineage going (and the pieces known) and not so much with any meditative or Zen practice purpose. I've read that Kinko gathered the pieces from all over Japan so I guess the people he learned them from did not play so many pieces (?) (unless he chose one or two pieces from a wider repertoire of a particular temple). 

As for me, I find it difficult to believe that knowing 30 pieces is going to make your Zen practice any better than if you just know 3, as I think you can only inmerse yourself in the piece once you've learned it so well that you don't need to think about the piece (the meris, yuris, colours and so on) any more, something much easier to achieve if you just keep on focusing on a limited amount of pieces than if always trying to learn a new one (I guess it's possible to do that with the 36 pieces if you are a full-time blower and you practice for more great deal of years!) 

Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe to develop your "own kind of breath", as I have read Watazumi mentioning, you need to explore and strecth that breath through a number of incresingly challenging and demanding pieces, and if you just stick to, let's say, Honshirabe, will miss the point completely. I guess it all depends on knowing how a Honkyoku piece can help your Zen practice, something I haven't been able to completely grasp yet...

I would like to learn so many pieces... I've heard so many fascinating ones! But sometimes I wonder what is my real purpose? Do I want to know the pieces because they sound great? To be a Shakuhachi performer? (I guess it's difficult to be a performer knowing just a couple of pieces!), to reach a certain goal? (becoming a "Shihan"? Impressing my friends? Be more self-assured), or just becasue I think learning a new piece will help my path to be a more mindfull, conscious, wise and compasionate person?

As for making the flute, just what I thought, it makes perfect sense that they made their own flutes, and also that some of them were quite refined, I guess they spent enough time with the flute to try different things with it, refine it over the years or even craft several ones and stick to the one that came out more nicely!

Thanks so much for your input and thoughts

Salud para todos!

Alex


"An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he's "at" somewhere. You always have to realise that you are constantly in the state of becoming. And as long as you can stay in that realm, you'll sort of be all right"
Bob Dylan

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#6 2007-04-30 23:50:00

Daniel Ryudo
Shihan/Kinko Ryu
From: Kochi, Japan
Registered: 2006-02-12
Posts: 355

Re: Komuso

Alex wrote:
Anyway, could someone tell me , first, how many pieces did a Komuso or any kind of monk who used Shakuhachi as a meditative tool usually knew and played regularly, and second, where did they get the Shakuhachi?

These questions would make a good research topic for someone who is fluent in written Japanese.  There's a lot of information we don't know about the komuso and sometimes rumors get passed around which we later find do not correlate with historical fact as we know it.  According to Yuko Kamisango's History of the Shakuhachi (translated by Christopher Blaesdel in his book The Shakuhachi) in the morning a managing priest would play an awakening piece called "Kakuseirei" to start off the day.  The monks would then gather to play a piece called "Choka," followed by a Zen session.  During the day the monks would practice shakuhachi, train in the martial arts, and do their begging practice.  In the evening they would return to the temple,  play a ritual piece called "Banka" and then do more Zen sitting.  Esoteric practices in the evening included playing the pieces "Shin-ya" and "Reibo."  During their wanderings they would play pieces such as "Tori" ("Passing"), "Kadozuke" ("Street Corners") and "Hachigaeshi" ("Returning the {Begging} Bowl").  According to Kamisango, when two komuso met on the road they would play "Yobi Take" ("Shakuhachi's Call") or "Uke Take" ("Shakuhachi's Answer"), but Sanford, in an article on the Fuke-Shu in Monumenta Nipponica, quotes a Japanese author named Koide, who implies that these calls were done vocally.  When monks were on the road and wishing to stay in a komuso temple they played "Hirakimon" or "Monbiraki" to gain entrance (Blaesdel, The Shakuhachi, p. 110).  That's about eight pieces, not including the shakuhachi calls on the road and for opening the gate, and it's not clear from that source how many other pieces were played.   Certain occasions, for example, the birth of a child, might call for a specific piece.  There are pieces that were specifically associated with particular Fuke temples.  Kurosawa Kinko was in charge of what was basically a Fuke shu franchised shakuhachi school, a subsidiary of Ichigetsuji, and he collected pieces from various temples as he was a composer and player who was very interested in the shakuhachi repertoire.  The average monk at one temple possibly did not know all of the pieces associated with another Fuke temple some distance away.  According to Sanford, the most prominent pieces among the komuso were "Reibo," (of which there are a number of variations; shakuhachi grandmaster Riley Lee traces the lineage of these in his dissertation), "Mukaiji," and "Koku."  Sanford also says that in the early days of the Fuke sect there were punishments inflicted on monks who played pieces other honkyoku - beatings, and sometimes removal of the offender's ear, nose, or fingers -- but that once the individual monk was out of the temple on pilgrimage he was "free to play whatever he wanted and call it anything he pleased" (Monumenta Nipponica, 32, 1977, p. 434).  The number of pieces known by a monk may have depended on which temple he was associated with, his familiarity with other Fuke temples and their pieces, and the extent of his interest in the musical aspect of his practice.  According to Sanford, the lack of interest in the music on the part of the mother temples (specifically Ichigetuji and Reihoji) was a factor in the spiritual decline of the Fuke sect, the secularization of the instrument, and the moving of the Fuke tradition from Edo to Kyoto, where Myoanji took the shakuhachi and Zen elements of the Fuke tradition more seriously.

Last edited by Daniel Ryudo (2007-05-01 00:00:38)

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#7 2007-05-01 01:20:41

Tairaku 太楽
Administrator/Performer
From: Tasmania
Registered: 2005-10-07
Posts: 3226
Website

Re: Komuso

Good research Ryudo! This is what makes the forum interesting.


'Progress means simplifying, not complicating' : Bruno Munari

http://www.myspace.com/tairakubrianritchie

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#8 2007-05-02 13:31:07

Alex
Member
From: Barcelona - Spain
Registered: 2005-10-17
Posts: 138

Re: Komuso

Hello everybody!

Wow! Thanks Ryudo, that's great information! I could have never thought there were so many pieces for so many specific ocassions! Thanks a lot for your valuable research!

Now, this rises new questions for me regarding Honkyoku pieces but not from a historical perspective but from a Zen one so I guess I'll post them in the corresponding section

Thanks again for your reflections and asnwers

Love this forum!

Alex


"An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he's "at" somewhere. You always have to realise that you are constantly in the state of becoming. And as long as you can stay in that realm, you'll sort of be all right"
Bob Dylan

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