Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Peter Hill always has something good to say on this subject.

My 25-cent take on it is that it is more representative of traditional Japanese tonality. The intervals are (slightly) different than modern Western influenced Japanese music which recently made shakuhachi have adapted to.

Personally, I have come to appreciate the sharp chi, particularly because I'm studying Meian (Taizan Ha) shakuhachi music. A sharp chi makes more sense. Even if I do (over) correct it for modern pitch, I still get a more unique tone color which I associate with older Japanese music.

If you want to play more recently interpreted or composed  Kinko and Tozan shakuhachi music (and "Yokoyama Dokyoku") you'll probably want a more recently made instrument.

If I follow this right, the sharp chi found on older flutes was a deliberate tunining appropriate to the kind of shakuhachi music being played at the time.  The modern shakuhachi adapted to more western pitches.

Some of those old schools are shakuhachi are still around, right?  Do they view other, later schools, such as kinko, tozan, etc, as "westernized", or perhaps even bastardized forms of honkyoku?  I'm curious if any makers today are reverting back to an intentional sharp chi.  In other words, lets say I wanted to play in the old school way, could I get a brand new flute with the old tuning?  Or do you need to play on old flutes to play in the old way?  I should add that I have never played on one of these old, sharp chi flutes, so am not too aware of how they differ.

Lorka wrote:

Some of those old schools are shakuhachi are still around, right?  Do they view other, later schools, such as kinko, tozan, etc, as "westernized", or perhaps even bastardized forms of honkyoku?

Among the Japanese shakuhachi musicians I have met in Japan the consensus seems to be that chi became flatter not to fit Western music but to fit traditional shamisen music. I have heard from scholars that it was due to Western influence, but have not yet heard any reasoning or evidence behind this claim.

As Glenn pointed out, some old recordings of shakuhachi in ensemble music has chi being sharp. To determine whether this was a) merely due to the instruments or b) due to the intentional tuning for that genre, I suggest analyzing the pitch of music of that genre and period with no shakuhachi in it. Try analyzing shamisen pitch, or, even better, voice. Voice would be best as the pitch intention is not constrained by the mechanics of the instrument as shamisen may be, and shakuhachi certainly is in the case of the position and/or hole size of the "chi" hole. Shakuhachi should be following the tuning of the jiuta players (in the case of jiuta) and this is why it should be the jiuta players (shamisen/voice), if possible uninfluenced by possibly-out-of-tune shakuhachi, that should be the authority to look at. Also as there are families of players with strict traditional forms of passing on the music from a young age, I would expect it to be not difficult for the Edo period tunings/temperaments the survive unaltered into the gramaphone record age, and very possibly to today in living practice.

Lorka wrote:

I'm curious if any makers today are reverting back to an intentional sharp chi.

For some honkyoku, for example the Seien-ryu honkyoku, I make shakuhachi with the Fudaiji Edo period honkyoku tuning which naturally has a sharper chi. These are rather specialist instruments though as they are out of tune for modern honkyoku styles and other genres.