The Jinashi Shakuhachi ― The Instrument Today and the Creation of a Contemporary Repertoire

With the abrogation of the Zen Buddhist Fuke sect during Japan’s modernisation process in the late nineteenth century, the raison d’être for the shakuhachi (Japanese vertical bamboo flute) as a spiritual tool for mendicant monks suddenly vanished. Thereafter, playing the shakuhachi changed from spiritual practice to professional musicianship or musical hobby. The fact that the instrument had been modified and ’improved’ has been a well-kept secret. The old style shakuhachi, now named jinashi shakuhachi, became a marginalised instrument for eccentrics. However, during the past decade it has gained popularity, especially outside Japan, where it is considered to be ’the real thing’ as opposed to the modernised jinuri shakuhachi. Kiku Day examines how the jinashi shakuhachi, although constructed according to the principles current prior to the Meiji Restoration, itself has been modified to adapt to the needs of modern players. In order to place the instrument into the modern world in its own right, the author, a professional jinashi shakuhachi player, describes her recent collaboration with five international composers on a performance project with the aim of creating a new repertoire. This process of cross cultural creation is described against the background of action research, Theory U, and the theory of flow.

Kiku Day is currently an associate lecturer at Aarhus University in Denmark. She gained an MFA in music performance from Mills College, USA and her PhD in ethnomusicology from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is a master performer of the jinashi shakuhachi, performing all over the world, and a founding member of the European Shakuhachi Society, for which she currently serves as a chairperson. She has a long-term interest in performance studies, the internationalisation of the shakuhachi, and in particular the online transmission of the music and spirituality associated with the instrument.