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?
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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)