Shinobue: breath, holes and festival music

The nōkan belongs to Noh and also kabuki; a short internal tube called the nodo gives it a distinctive bore and sound. The ryūteki is used in gagaku, including tōgaku. Shinobue serve festival ensembles and shamisen music. Bamboo construction, sideways playing or seven finger holes alone cannot identify which instrument is being heard or seen.

The maker selects medake bamboo with suitable internodes, seasons it and straightens it with heat. In the process documented by Shinobue Culture Research, the blowing hole is formed first, then each finger hole is cut, played and adjusted. Positions and sizes must suit pitch and tone while remaining comfortable for the fingers. Interior lacquer is applied repeatedly, curing between coats in a humidity-controlled chamber. Rattan binding then strengthens and decorates the tube. Modern teaching instruments also use plastic. The Suzuki Dōji used for the fingering example here is made of resin and offered in six-, seven- and eight-hon tunings. Its manual permits washing with water but warns against hot-water disinfection. It is a teaching-instrument option alongside traditional bamboo flutes.

The lower register is called ryo-on; kan-on lies an octave above, with daikan-on higher still. Register changes involve the air stream as well as fingering. Traditional articulation can also use a very brief finger-hole movement to separate sounds. This finger striking, or yubiuchi, contributes the crisp ornament heard in festival playing. The Suzuki Dōji chart gives a concrete example: with the hole farthest from the mouth open and the other six closed, it lists both the lower 一 and the octave-higher 1. Breath distinguishes their registers. A Chiba teaching study also uses a brief finger stroke to separate repeated notes, making the second note distinct without tonguing each one.

Festival flutes may retain local hole patterns and scales. Uta-yō instruments instead adjust intervals within a flute to suit song, shamisen and koto. Shinobue Culture Research describes small changes to classical-type hole positions and sizes; Nichion likewise distinguishes the unequal holes of its uta-yō products. Changing flute shifts a melody’s overall pitch, while changing its hole design alters relationships between the notes. Modern “doremi” flutes are designed for Western equal temperament, a separate purpose even when commercial terminology overlaps.

At Aomori Nebuta, flute joins drums and hand-held metal percussion. The festival’s official account describes a preservation association founded in 1948 and a 1955 ensemble competition at which groups performed the standardised seven-section hayashi. This is a local example of organising inherited music for shared performance. This standardisation concerned the flute melody; drum patterns were not standardised at the same time. Later transmission standards identify procession, pause and return as basic hayashi types, with seven sections for procession and return. The official intermediate procession score shows those seven sections, while explicitly directing advanced learners towards individual instruction.

Meiji manuals illustrated holding, blowing and hole positions for learners to consult. Sun Xiaomeng’s Society for Research in Asiatic Music conference abstract places Osaka manuals by Ogawa Genjirō and Ōsei Sanshi in the kabuki environment of 1887–1896 (Meiji 20–29). By 1932, the fifth Fukuhara Hyakunosuke’s published notation used Chinese and Arabic numerals to distinguish registers; the sixth subsequently revised duration signs. Printed notation increasingly represented rhythm and melody as well as finger positions.

Shinobue Culture Research traces flute-centred concert performance to Meiji and later, using extracted festival or shamisen repertoire and new compositions. The fifth and sixth Fukuhara Hyakunosuke pursued designs better suited to song and shamisen. Earlier flute intervals could mismatch the strings, leaving players to compensate through breath and fingering. Shinobue Culture Research dates the sixth’s completion of an improved form of his father’s flute to 1946, citing autobiographical accounts; the name uta-yō subsequently spread. A later named example is the sixth’s Take no uta: a Chiba teaching study presents it through two differently pitched flutes so learners can compare their sounds. Staged taiko music, developing from mid-Shōwa through Heisei, added another setting for flute melodies and solo interludes.

A number score needs its own fingering key. Suzuki’s Dōji manual uses Chinese numerals for ryo and Arabic numerals for kan, alongside a dot for a rest, a slash for an extension and a side mark for a half-beat. A separate chart links the numerals to open and closed holes. Such notation records note positions, registers and durations; breath angle, tone and finger articulation still require demonstration and listening. Aomori’s intermediate score instead uses filled and unfilled circles, illustrating a different local notation system.