Hatsuhana and shakuhachi
Feb. 26th, 2006 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusSaturday was my last full day in Japan before I head off for three months in New York; it was also the warmest day of the year so far. Hisae and I went to Hirano, a shitamachi district in the south of Osaka. There, in a temple garden, I saw hatsuhana, the first cherry blossom of the year. (The word can also refer to a young girl coming of age, or her first period.) It usually comes at the end of March, but this year it's a month early, which is slightly ominous. Global warming, or just the benign sun-trap of that lovely temple garden?
Rooting around in a junk shop in a nearby arcade, we heard the lovely sound of three shakuhachi flutes interweaving lines. We asked the salesman if there was a music school nearby, and he said that it was the owner of the shop, giving private lessons upstairs. Did we want to visit? We did indeed, and were ushered into a room in which three players sat, the sensei (a Kansai University professor), his friend, and a young female student. The wallpaper and floor-covering of this room was amazing, very 70s. On the wall hung a calendar showing a Japanese alpine scene.
We were warmly welcomed (sensei, hearing I was from Scotland, even gave me a rendition of "For Auld Lang Syne"), and the music sank me into a most delicious trance (which didn't stop me surreptitiously recording the flutes with my camcorder). Afterwards, the sensei, sensing my interest, and learning that I was a musician myself, went to get the full traditional gear and let me try it on. For some reason, shakuhachi players are supposed to wear a big basket over their heads, one that completely covers their face. I think it goes back to samurai times; if you want to visit a rival samurai's castle to spy on him, you wear this big basket over your head to hide your identity, or something. Anyway, it was the weirdest, most extreme headgear I think I've ever worn... And the shakuhachi I'm holding in the photo is probably the most expensive musical instrument I've ever touched; it's worth about $43,000. Apparently it's very difficult to find a piece of bamboo with seven segments of just the right length. Only about 10% of bamboos fulfill those criteria, and many of those crack when they're drying, so they can't be used.
Money can't make you happy, but you certainly need a lot if playing the shakuhachi is what makes you happy. Then again, like a basket-headed samurai spy I came away with enough of the sound of the instrument on my Cybershot memory card to add a solo or two to my album... Scot free.
Trivia question: which song on the very first Momus album opens with a shakuhachi sample played on an Emulator 2?
Rooting around in a junk shop in a nearby arcade, we heard the lovely sound of three shakuhachi flutes interweaving lines. We asked the salesman if there was a music school nearby, and he said that it was the owner of the shop, giving private lessons upstairs. Did we want to visit? We did indeed, and were ushered into a room in which three players sat, the sensei (a Kansai University professor), his friend, and a young female student. The wallpaper and floor-covering of this room was amazing, very 70s. On the wall hung a calendar showing a Japanese alpine scene.
We were warmly welcomed (sensei, hearing I was from Scotland, even gave me a rendition of "For Auld Lang Syne"), and the music sank me into a most delicious trance (which didn't stop me surreptitiously recording the flutes with my camcorder). Afterwards, the sensei, sensing my interest, and learning that I was a musician myself, went to get the full traditional gear and let me try it on. For some reason, shakuhachi players are supposed to wear a big basket over their heads, one that completely covers their face. I think it goes back to samurai times; if you want to visit a rival samurai's castle to spy on him, you wear this big basket over your head to hide your identity, or something. Anyway, it was the weirdest, most extreme headgear I think I've ever worn... And the shakuhachi I'm holding in the photo is probably the most expensive musical instrument I've ever touched; it's worth about $43,000. Apparently it's very difficult to find a piece of bamboo with seven segments of just the right length. Only about 10% of bamboos fulfill those criteria, and many of those crack when they're drying, so they can't be used.
Money can't make you happy, but you certainly need a lot if playing the shakuhachi is what makes you happy. Then again, like a basket-headed samurai spy I came away with enough of the sound of the instrument on my Cybershot memory card to add a solo or two to my album... Scot free.
Trivia question: which song on the very first Momus album opens with a shakuhachi sample played on an Emulator 2?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 03:16 pm (UTC)It would probably never occur to a Westener that the music
was more important than the contorted lips of the musician
making it?
Later in the year comes the mad pink phlox moss, making the
hills of Hokkaido so very camp...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 03:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 03:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 03:29 pm (UTC)Next question: on which album sleeve am I surrounded by cherry blossom?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 03:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 03:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 03:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 05:59 pm (UTC)Really shallow n' that, but...
Date: 2006-02-25 03:31 pm (UTC)Oh, thank you, spring'll bring that out in you!
Date: 2006-02-25 03:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 03:48 pm (UTC)Re: Oh, thank you, spring'll bring that out in you!
Date: 2006-02-25 04:00 pm (UTC)It's great. Be nice if you had a hair more room in front of the face... a few pixel (at this size).
whatever though it's awsome.
Look!
Date: 2006-02-27 02:54 am (UTC)One word is all that is needed:
Date: 2006-02-25 03:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 03:58 pm (UTC)I've been really wanting that and last time I left Shanghai I couldn't afford the tickets through Narita so I missed out.
But yeah, if you think of it while bored at the airport....
...that basket thing is cool. I want one. lol.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 04:13 pm (UTC)(Photos taken today, that is saturday for me though).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 04:31 pm (UTC)patterns and global warming
Date: 2007-11-07 04:59 am (UTC)I don't think a few years strange weather patterns are enough to conclude that global warming is the cause. Now, I firmly believe that global warming is happening and humans are contributing heavily to it. I just want to encourage people to look at the long term patterns in the scientific data that result in this conclusion, rather than basing it on short term weather patterns that can't actually provide any useful proof.
Nathan
How Can We Help Stop Global Warming With A Bracelet? (http://www.acoolerclimate.com/Articles/HowCanWeStopGlobalWarming.html)
Learn How To Help Stop Global Warming By Knowing Your Paper Recycling Facts (http://www.acoolerclimate.com/Articles/PreventGlobalWarmingPaperRecyclingFacts.html)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 04:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-26 04:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 05:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 06:37 pm (UTC)Gosh, what a rich life you lead.
We already have daffodils coming up.
Date: 2006-02-25 06:46 pm (UTC)While I think global warming is a real problem, I don't think it explains the entirety of the current weather pattern, as much more drastic weather patterns have come and gone long before we started spewing our nasty little industrial soup into the air. The last ice age (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age) is now thought by many climatologists to have ended within a few decades, the Medieval period was unusually warm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period), and was quickly followed by a little ice age (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age) between the 14th-19th centuries.
Even if the scenarios are correct, the Earth would still not get as hot as it was in the balmy, wet Eocene (Eocene), a time when the world was so warm that tropical rainforests extended as far as the 45th latitude, palm trees grew as far north as Alaska, and forests of cedars and redwoods covered the poles. Of course, with the lessened variation in climate came less biodiversity.
I may speak heresy, but in the grand scheme of themes, global warming may bode much worse for us than it does the Earth, which has seen far worse than the likes of us. This is cold comfort if, like me, you're a lover of climatologically sensitive biomes like wetlands or coral reefs, since the rising worldwide ocean temps are killing them. I've seen coral die-offs in Central America, Africa, and Australia. It's heartbreaking.
Safe journey, Nick.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 07:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 07:39 pm (UTC)Now if only you had a school uniform.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-25 08:10 pm (UTC)The Three Fukeshu
Date: 2006-02-26 12:48 am (UTC)"Wait a minute, you went to Hirano and heard flute music and were invited in to listen to a concert by three shakuhachi players, and try on medieval costumes?"
"Yes!"
"Tell me, did one of them keep lighting cigarettes but never smoking them?"
"As a matter of fact, he did, yes! Why?"
"Do you realize you met The Three Fukeshu?"
"Who are they?"
"They've been dead for six hundred years."
"And the cigarettes?"
"Six hundred years ago there was no tobacco in Japan. Those ghosts don't know how to smoke."
Re: The Three Fukeshu
Date: 2006-02-26 04:12 am (UTC)komoso my bach
Date: 2006-02-26 05:14 pm (UTC)Re: 虚無僧
Date: 2006-02-26 09:42 pm (UTC)Re: 虚無僧
Date: 2006-02-27 02:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-26 03:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-26 05:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-27 04:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-27 06:30 am (UTC)-- ok I am officially freaked out. Just while writing this post, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin's rendition of Auld Lang Syne played randomly on my iTunes.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-02 03:29 am (UTC)Absolutely mind blowing. Read my LJ for more details if ya like.
Lee wasn't wearing the full head gear, but the sound of his shakuhachi was just beautiful. Achingly so.
Thought you may appreciate it! :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-04 05:59 pm (UTC)If you wouldn't mind I'd be extra glad if you wouldn't mind sending me a bigger copy in case I manage to put it in print (in a magazine I want to make) but that won't happen for a while anyway. For now it's just going to a Japanese student oprganization's newsletter.
??
thanks.