Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Hi Andreas, Welcome to the forum. There are a lot of hankos out there. It would be time consuming for anyone to even begin to catalog everything. Perhaps you upload a digital photo of the hankos. Someone here may be able to identify them.

Good luck, Perry

Hi, and welcome aboard!
I thought I'd share my experience of trying to get a hanko translated.
As Tairaku has suggested I posted pictures here, but with no luck

I also tried asking Kiku (hope you are feeling better at home -get well soon!) with a similar responce to the typical one Tairaku quotes ("Nice Hanko- I can't read it").
Being persistant I asked a Japanese aquaintence with a similar responce.
Then I met a couple of Chinese students one of whom confidently translated it as "Controlled Peace".

But where does that leave me?
It may or may not be an accurate translation and I'm happy with it as a "meaning". But more importantly I love the flute (more than the Yuu, though they both have their advantages).

Now I just have to work on getting a responce to my playing thats more like "cotrolled peace" and less like "Controlled irritation"!

Persist (if you like), but don't worry about it.

Cheers

Andreas wrote:

Thanks for Your help.
How can I upload pictures to the forum,
then I can present the hanko's.

Hi Andreas. Here is a page Ken put together: http://shakuhachiforum.com/help.php#img It will show you how to do links, photos and other fun stuff.

This forum uses BBCode. Much like HTML.

First you'll need to upload the photo to your server or any place where you can store and share photos on the internet. Then use this the code tag [img]yourphotoaddress[/img]


For example, This BBCode, [img]http://www.yungflutes.com/logphotos/Yunghanko.jpg[img], creates this:

Tairaku wrote:

Japanese player: Very difficult. This is old Japanese. This character we don't use any more. Could say "mountain stream" but might say "dog urine". Very difficult.

Me: Thanks!

I have never met any Japanese person who could read these things. If they don't recognize the specific hanko as belonging to a certain maker they have difficulty reading it.

I've also come across this quite often as there are several systems involved in reading and writing Japanese.
My hanko is written in old Chinese. So far, every Japanese person I've encountered could read it. It is a bit small though and sometimes the burn marks gets fuzzy and that makes it more difficult.

Ambi wrote:

Hi, and welcome aboard!
I thought I'd share my experience of trying to get a hanko translated.
As Tairaku has suggested I posted pictures here, but with no luck.

Ambi, Your hanko is written in So-sho style, like an autograph. People do it to be somewhat esoteric. I've seen the hanko before but sorry, can't put a name on it.

Namaste, Perry

Tairaku wrote:

Yungflutes wrote:

Ambi, Your hanko is written in So-sho style, like an autograph. People do it to be somewhat esoteric. I've seen the hanko before but sorry, can't put a name on it.

Namaste, Perry

If you've seen the hanko before, were the flutes it was attached to nice?

I can't say that I remember what this one was like. I  usually only remember ones that were super great or super not so great.

Peace, Perry

Hello again
that didn't work.
I try something others.
You can see the hanko on this adress:
http://www.traverso.ch/downloads/index.html

greetings  Andreas

This topic seems to come up fairly often and I'm sure that people who buy unknown flutes would love to know the maker. The hanko system is really nice in that it lets us know something about the maker even if he died hundreds of years ago. Since reading hanko can be really hard for experts it will most certainly be impossible for novices.

Would it be possible if we started an "identify a hanko" forum? Say, someone posts something like "Hanko of Sukisuki Teriyaki" and then includes a picture of the hanko used. Additional information about the maker can also be included in cases where something is known. It may be hard to find information on some obscure person who died a hundred years ago but at least we might be able to keep the makers of today from becoming obscure people hundred years in the future. If someone has an unknown hanko he can post a picture of it and it can remain nameless until someone figures out who it belongs to. At that point the thread gets renamed to reflect the new findings. One thread can grow to include more examples of the work of the same person whenever someone encounters the same hanko again.

The idea doesn't sound so absurd to me. It takes a bit of editing work to keep the listings current when things get identified but otherwise it should run pretty much on its own weight. Even if we never ever get a single hanko identified it still means that we end up with a nice list of pretty pictures. Everyone likes pretty pictures, right? We have a lot of people on this forum who know a lot about these things but that knowledge may never get out there unless someone happens to ask.

If the maintenance work required to keep the section running is too much for our current administrators, I'll gladly volunteer to keep everything organised.

Andreas, I re-tuned several old flutes earlier last week. One was a Seikado made in the 1940's.

This Hanko is an older one that signifies the father of the present Kitahara in charge. It reads Seika. I'm now pretty certain your flute is a Seikado. I'm not sure what period though.

Best, Perry

rpowers wrote:

It does seem like a long shot to expect someone else to come up with the same mysterious hanko I have been trying to identify.

For example, my 1.8:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2375/204 … 5796_m.jpg

Hey, wait a minute--Perry's good!

At the New York festival, I had the conversation Tairaku described with just about everybody I could (excepting one person I didn't ask because I didn't think I could afford him). Nobody recognized it.

I had pretty much given up.

Hi Rich, I'm glad this posting helped you! It is a bummer not knowing who made your flute. This style of Kanji looks like it's based on the earliest pictogram chinese writings before they became formalized Chinese characters. That's probably why it's so difficult to read. Any historians out there?

The second Kanji, the Ka of Sei ka, reads Ocean and sometimes Chinese. If you go to a Chinatown in America, you may see a sign with that kanji, or character, next to a Chinese character that reads Town or Street.

That Character is part of my Chinese name and is in my own Hanko. That's why I can recognize it.

BTW, was that you I bumped into in transit at Narita Airport about two years ago?

Peace, Perry

rpowers wrote:

Yungflutes wrote:

BTW, was that you I bumped into in transit at Narita Airport about two years ago?

That was me, but it seems more like 3 or 4 years ago.

Looking at the photo again (shaving the thumbhole)--doesn't your X-acto collet want to come unscrewed when you cut that direction?

Yes, it does come loose now and then. I used to use a Japanese carving knife but the exacto handle is smaller and allows me better control, especially on the undercutting.

As for Narita, it was probably around 3 years. I've been back since then but I wasn't sure which time I bumped into you.

Peace, Perry

Hi Andreas, I'm glad your posting worked!
All the best, Perry