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The shakuhachi is a Japanese end-blown flute. The common Fuke-derived form has four front fingerholes and one at the back. Breath directed across the blowing edge, finger positions and head angle shape pitch and tone in solo honkyoku, ensemble music and modern compositions.
The usual Fuke-derived instrument uses the root-end section of madake bamboo, commonly including seven nodes. A standard 1-shaku-8-sun flute is about 54 cm, but other lengths, including 1 shaku 6 sun, are also used. Shorter instruments generally sound higher. Wood and plastic versions exist too.
Unlike a recorder, the shakuhachi does not direct the breath through a built-in windway. The player shapes the air stream with the lips and angle of blowing. Half-covered holes and adjustments of breath, neck and jaw extend pitch and tone beyond five basic fingerings. Meri and kari changes are part of this flexible technique.
Geidai’s teaching account describes meri as drawing the jaw inward to lower pitch, and kari as moving it outward to raise pitch. The movement changes the relationship between the air stream and the blowing edge and can work with partially covered holes.
A fingering therefore does not fix every possible pitch: five holes do not mean five fixed notes. Meri and kari describe playing relationships, rather than a single identical interval produced every time.
Classical honkyoku is associated with komusō practice and local temple transmission, often stretching tones outside a regular beat. Similar names can cover different melodies. Kinko repertory and the new honkyoku composed by Tozan founder Nakao Tozan share the term while differing in date and formation.
In sankyoku ensembles with koto and shamisen, the shakuhachi may play melodies originating in koto music or jiuta. From its repertory perspective these are gaikyoku. Such ensembles existed in the Edo period and flourished further after Meiji. Folk accompaniment and combinations with other instruments extend its settings.
Maker Kouno Gyokusui distinguishes jiari, with a prepared ground throughout the bore beneath lacquer, from jinashi, which uses the bamboo’s existing bore without that ground. A nobe flute remains one continuous piece; a nakatsugi instrument joins upper and lower sections. The bore and joint are further structural distinctions.
Shakuhachi teaching also uses written notation. Tozan-ryū employs signs resembling katakana, including ro, tsu, re, chi and ha, and publishes notation guides and beginner texts. These signs belong to a teaching tradition alongside instruction in holding the flute and producing sound. A reader should use the notation system of the relevant school.
Geidai’s fingering chart connects notation signs to covered and open holes: filled circles mean closed, open circles mean open. In the right-hand ro column, all five holes are closed; the top row identifies the fifth hole on the back. The chart links a written sign to finger action.
Singing the note names as a melody is shōfu, part of memorizing and transmitting a piece. In the Rokudan no shirabe comparison above, Kinko notation is on the left and Tozan notation on the right, with separate starting arrows. A shared title can use different notation systems, so reading follows the relevant school’s teaching. Fingering and sung notation work alongside breath and angle in playing.
Ancient shakuhachi came from China as a gagaku instrument; examples survive in the Shōsōin. They have five front holes and one rear hole, unlike today’s common five-hole instrument. The name’s ancient Chinese unit of length should not be equated directly with the modern Japanese standard.
The medieval hitoyogiri used a single bamboo node and later served solo and ensemble music. The present Fuke-derived form developed around the late sixteenth century and became associated with komusō. The Japan Arts Council identifies the account of Kakushin bringing it from Song China in the thirteenth century as a tradition, not an established date for this instrument’s form.
With the formation of the Fuke institution in the later seventeenth century, playing and teaching were restricted around its use as a komusō religious implement. Those restrictions did not wholly prevent lay teaching or ensemble performance. In the eighteenth century, Kurosawa Kinko collected and organized local repertories, providing a foundation for Kinko honkyoku.
After the abolition of the Fuke institution in 1871, musical activity expanded while Myōan-related traditions retained religious practice. Nakao Tozan founded Tozan-ryū in Osaka in 1896, composing honkyoku with clearly shaped melody, rhythm and ensemble possibilities. His 1902 photograph in komusō dress is a modern image of Tozan, not an Edo-period documentary photograph.
Senzoku’s repertory library places Fukuda Randō’s Gekkō Rōteki (1933) and Hirose Ryōhei’s Kakurin (1973) alongside classical works. Kakurin uses six movements and modern procedures including freely ordered fragments. New composition has changed the musical experience as well as its performance settings.
Tōru Takemitsu’s November Steps combines shakuhachi, biwa and orchestra. Commissioned for the New York Philharmonic’s 125th anniversary, it premiered on 9 November 1967 with Katsuya Yokoyama on shakuhachi, Kinshi Tsuruta on biwa and Seiji Ozawa conducting. It provides a specific twentieth-century example of the instrument in orchestral composition.
At the back; four others are on the front.
No. Partial covering, breath and angle also alter pitch.
No. Ancient examples have six; the common modern form has five.
The Fuke institution was abolished.
No. Much of it was newly composed by Nakao Tozan.
Meri draws the jaw inward and lowers pitch; kari moves it outward and raises pitch.
All five holes are closed; shōfu sings the notation’s note names as a melody.
