GET YOUR OWN CUSTOM SHAKUHACHI!
SAMURAI, RONIN AND THEIR WEAPON!
SHAKUHACHI PHOTOS
FAMOUS, ANTIQUE AND INTERESTING SHAKUHACHI
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WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A REAL FLUTE PLAYER!! JOSE HERE IS PLAYING A MUSINU CHERQUE FROM THE BOLIVIAN ANDES. HE PLAYS TO SUMMON THE SPIRITS OF HIS ANCESTORS, FOR SPECIAL OCCASIONS, AND THEN RETURN THEM TO THEIR RESTING PLACES.
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THESE FLUTES ARE 9,000 YEARS OLD! BUT NOT THE WORLD'S OLDEST! They WERE MADE FROM The ulnae or wing bones of the red-crowned crane (Grus japonensis Millen) and have five, six, seven or eight holes. THEY ARE THE OLDEST COMPLETE AND PLAYABLE FLUTES IN THE WORLD, BUT BROKEN FLUTES 40,000 YEARS OLD HAVE BEEN FOUND IN FRANCE, MADE OF THE LEG BONES OF BEARS. |
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Oops! How'd my baby girl, Christa, sneak in here? Oh well, she loves her shakuhahci CDs! |
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AND MY GRANDSON, CODY NEILL, son of Gene Neill III, unquestionably IS GOING TO MAKE A GRAND SHAKUHACHI master one day! Check that fingering form! Click to enlarge |
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One of these three cost $230. The other two were $3.95 each. Not a whole entire world of difference, huh? |
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Ha ha ha
- this'll shake up my Democratic pals out there in shakuhahci land.
IT SAYS
BUSH 2004 Ha, ha, ha, ha! |
| Shakuhachi
Master John Singer has very kindly given me permission to publish some
photos from his masterful Photo Gallery, which you may see at #
Top to bottom, these are . . . . 1.7 length Edo period Kinko Shakuhachi made by Hattori Kanshi, student of Kinko 3. 1.8 length Edo period Kinko Shakuhachi made called Sato Garasu. 1.8 length Edo period Kinko Shakuhachi made by Tsunemasa, a high ranking Samurai and Kinko player during the 17th century. 1.8 length Edo period Kinko Shakuhachi attributed to Hisamatsu Fuyo, a student of Kinko 3. 1.8 length early Meiji period Kinko Shakuhachi made by Araki Chikuo, student of Toyoda Godo and Hisamatsu Fuyo.. 2.1 length Edo period Komuso Shakuhachi from Northern Japan. I could really LUST over these!!!!! |
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This is old WATASHIWA, Corporal Neill, United States Marine Corps, standing in front of our Company Headquarters, Okubo, Japan, 1952- 1954 (right outside Kyoto). I dearly loved - and still love - Japan and the Japanese people! And did I think I was one "hep cat" or what! |
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And this is my Japanese/Czech sidecar rig. The scooter is a Honda Helix and the sidecar is Jawa from the Czech Republic. I bought them new and put them together myself - with an enormous Italian musical air horn which VERY LOUDLY BLASTS OUT "DIXIE" at the push of a button! |
| Here's what the we're all about: the Japanese Giant Bamboo. Madake. phyllostachys bambusoides Sieb. et Zucc. The stuff shakuhachi are made of! And this is a grove of it at the Daikakuji Temple in Kyoto, Japan, where I lived for two years! Wish I had cut some back there 50 years ago and brought it home with me! |
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How'd you like to bop around town on this little beauty - a bamboo bicycle! Years ago the Japanese made their racing bikes out of bamboo also. |
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Yasuhide "Ozhan" Yokoyama is my Japanese shakuhachi friend, and as you can see from the photos on the left, a real piece of work! He also happens to be extraordinarily brilliant! His massive shakuhachi web site # is in Japanese, but very well worth running through a translation page! Do not miss this guy! |
And, speaking of characters, check out my dear Japanese friend here - "HORIZONTAL MOUNTAIN" YOKOYAMA (Ha, ha, don't ask me where he came up with that moniker)!
Obviously my kinda' guy!
Click, of course, to enlarge:
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| Tatsuaki Kuroda is a very dear Japanese internet friend of mine, and a brilliant man indeed! He makes, plays and collects shakuhachi (with or without his wife's consent!), and has even developed an incredible online tuner and metronome for all instruments, including the shakuhachi (he's on my links page). I think, like I, he's a little henpecked, but then which of you married guys is gonna' lie and say you're the "boss" in your household! And, when I asked him for pictures of himself and his wife, Mariko - here's what he sends me: |
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But I
sent a picture to Kuroda
san of Dorothy and me, and
Kuroda
- considering himself the world's foremost comedian - posed his wife and
himself in an opposite pose from Dorothy and me, and sent it to us.
Like on the left here, one above the other . . . .
But I've got to tell you something. These few Japanese shakuhachi friends of mine have turned out to be some of the sweetest and brightest folks I've ever known in my lifetime! |
This
GREAT GIF is created by my Japanese friend
Tatsuaki Kuroda
of
#
AND, BY WAY OF A NEW YEAR'S CARD, KURODA SAN send me an internet video of him playing the introduction of the marvelous old Japanese osyougatu classic Koto and shakuhachi duet, called HARU NO UMI or "Spring Sea." This was written in 1927 by blind Miyagi Michio, and is a musical seascape of the Tomonoura coast on the Inland Sea. Just click here, and you should be able to hear it: Happy New Year
| These pictures on the right were taken in my back yard here on the Suwannee River - an incomparable place to go blow Zen! The first picture is me playing my favorite Yuu shakuhachi. And the second one is a shot of me blowing my 37", 92 cm, low "F" PVC hochiku, of which Watazumi-do would be most proud! It's so big it makes waves on the river! (I'm not really this fat; it's the dumb wide-angle lens in this digital!). |
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A NUMBER OF YOU HAVE ASKED ME HOW TO TAKE APART YOUR SHAKUHACHI AT THE NAKATSUGI JOINT. . . .
FOR OPENERS, WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO TAKE IT APART AND PUT IT BACK TOGETHER?
YOU ARE DEFINITELY GOING TO LOOSEN THE NAKATSUGI EVENTUALLY.
WELL, IF YOU MUST TAKE IT APART FOR SOME COMPELLING REASON, HERE'S THE TECHNIQUE RECOMMENDED BY MOST:
To tell you the truth, I never take mine apart.
And I have Epoxy glued together two of my favorite everyday practice shakuhachi, so they cannot be taken apart. REMEMBER: The whole purpose of evolving the one-piece hochiku or nobe or nobekan into the two-piece shakuhachi, was so the shakuhachi maker could get at the bore for his ji work. It was not for the subsequent convenience of dismantlement procedures by the player. And every time you take yours apart and put it back together, you loosen up the nakatsugi, however slightly. Leave it alone!
