Schools & Styles

Myōan is an umbrella term for the shakuhachi groups that continued somewhat in the footsteps of the komusō monks of the Fuke sect and include:

Echigo Myoan

Itchoken Ryū

Kyushu Kei

Myōan

Nezasa Ha (Kimpu Ryū)

Ōshū kei

Seien Ryū (Fudaiji temple)

Shimpo Ryū

Taizan-ha

Taizan-ryū

Contemporary music for the shakuhachi

Today, the shakuhachi is used in a wide variety of musical environments, both in Japan and elsewhere. These environments include traditional genres such as honkyoku (core repertoire), which is discussed elsewhere on this website, and non-traditional genres, such as jazz, classical and pop. Non-traditional genres will often reflect a cross-cultural element as seen, for example, in the seminal composition November Steps (1967) for shakuhachi, biwa, and western classical orchestra, by Takemitsu Torū (1930-1996), or in the pop song Sledgehammer (1986) by the British singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel, in which a shakuhachi is used in the introduction.

The expansion of the shakuhachi into these repertoires, both at home and on the international front is the result of changes from the late nineteenth century onwards. From 1868, significant society-wide social changes, including the revocation of religious guilds, meant that komusō needed to adapt and find new sources of income to survive. During this period of societal adaptation and intensive westernisation, new, secular shakuhachi schools were established, such as the Tozan-ryū in 1896. During the early decades of the twentieth century Nakao Tozan (1876-1956) developed a new secular repertoire for the shakuhachi, which incorporated new techniques and was written in a new style of notation, all printed in a teach-yourself book. Publishing self-study texts was an innovation in traditional musics such as the shakuhachi, but very much reflected the zeitgeist of the time with the inception of numerous publishing houses promoting self-study manuals in all manner of subjects.

Education at home and in school was a cornerstone of the new Japan. Contiguous with self-study was the development of a national education curriculum, in which western music was privileged as an important conduit by which western ideas and approaches could be accessed. Izawa Shūji was a key architect of the musical component of this curriculum and advocated a cross-cultural blend of the ‘best’ of Japanese music and western classical music, whatever that ‘best’ might be. Despite the ideal of such combinations, cross-cultural experiments during the early part of the twentieth century were limited and tended to focus upon popular melodies, shōga (school songs) and forms from genres such as gagaku rather than individual instrumental traditions like the shakuhachi. Whilst shinkyoku (new music for traditional instruments) began to emerge during the 1920s, supported by musicians like Tozan and Miyagi Michio (1894-1956), political events of the 1920s and 1930s and limited access to international resources hindered the evolution of much cross-cultural and non-traditional collaboration with shakuhachi players until the prolific post-war experimental era of the 1960s.

During the 1960s Japan experienced rapid economic growth and unprecedented openness to the international arena, which for musicians, meant access to international music resources, events and people. In addition Japanese composers showed a renewed interest in traditional musics, despite reservations over the militant associations between some genres and WW2. This interest in hōgaku (traditional music) was given further impetus by the ‘Cage Shock’. Early in the 1960s the ideas of the American composer John Cage (1912-1992) were imported into Japan, and many Japanese composers were shocked to discover that Cage was exploring ideas already prevalent in Japanese music traditions. Cage encouraged Japanese composers to look to the concepts underlying their own traditions, which many did, particularly Takemitsu. It is from this era that traditional instruments, such as the shakuhachi, began to be more widely used in non-traditional genres such as classical, film, and jazz as composers and performers explored new avenues and their music was increasingly disseminated on international scene as well as the domestic front.

The most significant non-traditional work by which the shakuhachi became known on the international scene is Takemitsu’s November Steps, which was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for their 125th anniversary in 1967. Since then, the work has frequently been performed in many countries. Whilst November Steps remains the best-known Japanese classical cross-cultural work involving the shakuhachi, Takemitsu was not the only Japanese composer engaging in cross-cultural experiments.

Other such composers include Miki Minoru (1930-2011) whose countless compositions cover cross-cultural endeavours such as his 1964 Concerto for Japanese instruments and strings using three shakuhachi, other Japanese instruments and a string ensemble, alongside gendai hōgaku compositions such as Poem in the Evening (1973) for a sankyoku ensemble of shakuhachi, shamisen and koto. Hirose Ryōhei (1930-2008) explored cross-cultural possibilities through compositions such as Heki (1964) for shakuhachi and string quartet, while Ishii Maki wrote Polaritäten Version II (1976) for shakuhachi, flute and orchestra. Outside the classical arena the shakuhachi was also appearing in genres such as jazz, particularly through the efforts of the shakuhachi player Yamamoto Hōzan (b.1937), and in film music for The Assassin (1964) and the TV series Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1966) both orchestrated by Takemitsu.

Furthermore, alongside traditional shakuhachi music, these non-traditional collaborations were reaching an international audience through overseas promotion, education and performance, and thus coming to the ears of non-Japanese musicians and composers who became interested in exploring the instrument. The shakuhachi player Iwamoto Yoshikazu (b.1945), for example, developed an international career during the 1970s and established himself as a player open to experimentation and engagement with non-traditional genres, such as avant-garde western classical music, which led to work with the British composer Frank Denyer (b.1943). Meanwhile, the American composer Marty Regan (b.1972), who was himself a shakuhachi player, studied composition in Japan under Miki Minoru. Elsewhere, the shakuhachi player and jazz advocate Yamamoto Hōzan extended his cross-cultural reach to include cross-cultural collaboration with the late classical sitarist of North India, Ravi Shankar.

Whilst the primary dissemination of the shakuhachi onto the international scene radiated out from Japan, this was not the sole route by which the shakuhachi the shakuhachi was known abroad; occasional musicians and composers would encounter the shakuhachi elsewhere. One such example is the western classical avant-garde composer Henry Cowell (1897-1965), who had been exposed to the musics of East Asia at an early age in the émigré communities of San Francisco. He later took lessons on the shakuhachi from a Japanese émigré to the U.S. and composed for the instrument. Cowell was also instrumental in establishing early ethnomusicology university programmes, and throughout his life was heavily involved in promoting musics from other cultures, however it was only towards the end of his life that music programmes featuring Japanese musics and other music cultures became more widely available in educational institutions. It was in programmes such as these that the shakuhachi player Iwamoto Yoshikazu was invited to participate, and thus met the British composer Frank Denyer.

From the early encounters between the shakuhachi and non-traditional environments in the pre-war era, the shakuhachi has now reached an international, and ever-widening audience interested in traditional and non-traditional forms of expression in composition and improvisation with a diverse array of western and non-western instruments. The names mentioned above are a small sample in an expanding field of musicians and composers fascinated and engaged by the distinctive sound of the shakuhachi.

Text by Flora Henderson

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