Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Such wonderful pics!

Thanks, Kirstykomuso!

Last edited by edosan (2007-09-13 15:49:14)

Thanks Kirstykomuso for the excellent report and superb photos from the 20th Anniversary Kokusai Kenshukan Festival.  It was truly a memorable experience and it was wonderful to see and play with shakuhachi enthusiasts from various countries around the world.  I was one of the several people you mentioned in your blog who was playing Shika No Tone at the  watch-tower.  Someone who was in the top of the tower played the first phrase of the piece and as I happened to be walking up the hill to the tower with shakuhachi in hand I played the reply and the duet went on from there, completely extemporaneous.  Later, after climbing the ladders up to the top of the wooden tower I met the other 'deer' for the first time, a young Japanese fellow (and excellent musician who was playing various honkyoku from memory from the top) named Toyotaka Honma.  That was just one of many great moments at that event!  Many thanks to Kakizakai, Matama, Furuya senseis and others for putting that whole event together.  It was unfortunate that Yokoyama sensei himself was unable to attend as I'm sure he would have really enjoyed the event.  I believe it was the largest gathering of shakuhachi players they have ever had at Bisei at one time, a larger gathering than had attended the first international festival at Bisei thirteen years ago, though I heard that the first international event with Yokoyama Katsuya playing on stage with Marco Lienhard on taiko, John Kaizan Neptune, and others had drawn a bigger audience.  Many Japanese players attended both events and though the foreign contingent was different on both occasions, a number of non-Japanese players who attended the 20th anniversary event had also been there as special guests or simply participants in the first international festival thirteen summers ago, including David Wheeler (who did a breathtakingly excellent job this summer as he has done at other events with all the translating Japanese into English and vice-versa for the concerts, panel discussion, and other events), Riley Lee, Tom Deaver, Bill O'Conner, Marco Lienhard, Tim Hoffman, John Kaizan Neptune, and myself.  Please forgive me if I've left anyone out...

Last edited by Daniel Ryudo (2007-09-12 20:40:09)

If Morita san is one of the regular participants in the yearly workshops at Bisei then I've probably met him or at least seen him.  What ryuha is your sensei in?  There were a lot of players in attendance so I didn't get to meet everyone though I think I did talk at least briefly with all the other gaijin players.  There were participants from Spain, Germany, and England as well as the U.S.A., Australia, and France and one player (English?) had traveled to Japan from Vietnam for the event.  To get to Bisei from Kochi I traveled with three Japanese players -- Yamamoto san, Nakata san, and Takahashi san,  by long distance bus, train and then chartered bus; two of them were Kinko players and one was Tozan.  Yes, the event was a bit expensive to attend but I noticed that some of the foreign participants this time got jobs as volunteers at the event -- preparing the rooms, doing the washing after meals etc. -- and that way they didn't have to pay; if you are interested in joining an event at Bisei in the future that might be something to look into. 

It was good to meet up with old friends and also meet new people.  I enjoyed talking with several foreign players whom I had never met before or had never had a chance to speak with before, such as Bruce Huebner, Peter Hill, and Rich Powers.  I spent a couple of the workshops sitting next to a shakuhachi maker from Nagoya named Miura, also a sixth dan in kyudo, who sold me a book of his tanka (thirty-one syllable poems) concerned with making and playing shakuhachi.   It was hot during the day but unlike Kirstykomuso, I actually found the sleeping room I was in, with about thirty other players all on futons, to be quite cool in temperature in the evening compared with Kochi, as Bisei is a good bit higher in elevation than the town where I live and sleeping came quite easily to me that first night, after all that playing, talking, and finally relaxing with several cold beers bought from a vendor selling them from a single styrofoam cooler in one of the outdoor passages between the old wooden school buidlings, where some of the low-key informal gathering of players went on after the first day's events were over.  The shakuhachi pros indoor concert held on the second day was quite good, representing a variety of styles, including Kiku Day's jinashi honkyoku, Riley Lee's virtuoso performance of the modern piece 'Raft Song at Sunrise,' David Wheeler and Bruce Huebner's Kawase style 'Shika No Tone,' Tim Hoffman's Indian raga played on shakuhachi, and Jim Franklin's original composition with theramin; for me the best came last, with Furuya sensei's nearly time stopping 'San'an,' the honkyoku Yokoyama Katsuya used to say was his favorite one to play. The big outdoor concert with biwa, taiko, and koto was a great experience, with a very enthusiastic audience, and though some of us on 2.4 missed our first cue from composer/conductor Ichiro Seki near the beginning of that last piece, it had a grand finale.  Some other highlights of the show were John Kaizan Neptune crowd pleasing smooth jazz on shakuhachi, and the skillful ensemble work of a group of six young Japanese woman players who played modern as well as traditional music in the outdoor concert and the next day in a large thatch roofed house in the Chuseiki Mura (village representing the Japanese Middle Ages); Kinko player Kuniyoshi Sugawara and his group of young Japanese players in their teens or twenties performing the last day at one of the other terracotta houses out in that spacious park were also quite excellent.  And there was one solitary komuso in full gear and tengai wandering the open spaces of woodland and scrubland...

Last edited by Daniel Ryudo (2007-09-12 23:16:57)

Hi Josh.  Yes, I also recall that things really started to get interesting with the question and answer session at the end of that panel; I had a question but the time was up; it was getting pretty late too, I think.  I also seem to remember that your Japanese skills were quite excellent, and that you were doing a good job translating for some the other foreigners at the workshops and other events. I remember now that the event 13 years ago used the old gymnasium for the shakuhachi classes whereas at the 20th event we just used the gym for that commemorative party after Saturday night's concert.  How many of you volunteers were there at the August event?

Josh wrote:

Hey,
Thanks, I did a fair bit of interpreting, it was fun. Except when the old guys went on drunk sake rants! 
Josh

Those guys take their drinking serioulsy. I accidentally joined the circle of jinbei-wearing oji-san the first evening.

After a few  rounds of beer, sake, and shochu (and the odd unintended Japanese boilermaker) I realized I was speaking Japanese with them. Wish you had been around to tell me what I was saying.

Last edited by rpowers (2007-09-22 16:03:21)