Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Hello Nobody (and everybody...)In connection with shakuhachi, insempo is the scale commonly associated with gaikyoku, the Edo era ensemble pieces with koto and shamisen.  Japanese sometimes refer to the in and yo scales, the in meaning the pentatonic scale (though it can also refer to a seven note scale - D, Eflat, F, G, A, Bflat, C)) containing meri notes (flats or sharps), and the yo scale, referring to the natural scale (D, F, G, A, C on a 1.8 shakuhachi) without sharps or flats.  The yo scale is commonly used in Japanese folk songs.  There are other scales used in Japanese music as
other Japanese instruments have their own tuning systems; koto, for example, utilizes various tunings -- one standard tuning is called hira-joshi, which is roughly equivalent to Western Phrygian, containing several sets of semitones - C, Dflat, Eflat, F, G, Aflat, Bflat, C.  There are also tones lying outside the mode which are brought in for modal contrast.  Rhythm often tends to take precedence over melody in Japanese chamber music, unlike Western music, where rhythm usually (but not always) tends to support melody.  There is an emphasis on the color, rhythm, and articulation of each individual sound or note in traditional Japanese music, and the music is often more purely linear than Western music; in sankyoku pieces where the main melody is played by the shamisen or koto, other lines, like the shakuhachi part, are superimposed on the koto or shamisen line. There are often increasingly dissonant rhythmic interactions between the instruments (and voice), and rhythmic dissonance is combined with melodic dissonance following what's often referred to as the jo ha kyu aesthetic -- "introduction, tearing apart, and rushing to conclusion" (as Henry Burnett puts it in an article on Jiuta-Tegotomono in Asian Music , 1980)   The in and yo scales are said to have developed out of a Buddhist scale called the ritsu scale (with basic notes D, E, G, A, B), a pentatonic scale which was imported from China.  There is also the ryo scale - D, E, F sharp, A, B), which was the other basic Buddhist scale.  Both scales also had two auxiliary tones, F and C in the case of the ritsu scale, and G# and C# in the case of the ryo scale.  Just a quote from another source, Malm's book on traditional Japanese instruments - "Japanese music does not require a full scale or harmonic support to establish a tonality.  Instead it is oriented more toward moving tone centers (usually a fourth or fifth apart) and supporting each center with pitches above or below it in whole or half steps."  Don't know if I answered your question or not but that's my two yen...