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At a Maker's Shop Outside Osaka
One of the great pleasures of such a trip is time spent in the workshop of a master shakuhachi maker. In a small shop outside Osaka, associated with the maker Kobayashi Ichijo, one can see how root-end madake bamboo is selected, cured and slowly transformed — the patient, exacting work that gives each flute its voice. Watching a master at the bench is itself an education that no book can replace.
Much of that work is invisible in the finished instrument. The bamboo is harvested in winter, when the sap is low, then dried and cured for years before it is ever cut to length. A maker reads each stalk for the spacing of its nodes, the thickness of its wall and the line of its bore, choosing which pieces will become a 1.8 study flute and which the rare, long ginashikan prized for meditative playing. Only then begins the slow shaping of the bore and the cutting of the angled blowing edge — adjustments measured in fractions of a millimetre, each one tested by ear.
Music at a Traditional Inn
Travel through Japan also means encountering the music in its living settings. At a ryokan — a traditional Japanese inn — a shakuhachi-and-koto group may gather to play, the breathy line of the flute weaving through the bright, plucked strings of the koto. Hearing the instruments together, in the place and culture that shaped them, deepens a player's understanding of the repertoire. The classical sankyoku ensemble of shakuhachi, koto and shamisen is one of the great chamber-music traditions of the world, and to hear it in a tatami room, with the garden visible through open screens, is to understand why the music is shaped the way it is.
Meeting Fellow Makers
A journey like this is also a chance to meet other makers and players — among them craftsmen such as Yamaguchi Shugetsu — to compare instruments, share techniques, and renew the friendships that connect the worldwide shakuhachi community. To learn about gatherings and festivals where players from many countries meet, see the international shakuhachi community.
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