You all remember Noh Hamlet, right? Well, I got in touch with Marcus Shinsui Grandon, the guy playing the shakuhachi in those clips online, to ask about the music, and he was kind enough to write today's blog post for me. (Plug: He has shakuhachi CDs for sale and can be reached at marcusgrandon at mac dot com by those interested. He's also a multi-media artist.)

Marcus sez (with links added by me):

In answer to your first question, yes, that is me in the video playing in Noh Hamlet. I've been the shakuhachi player in all the Noh Hamlets that have had shakuhachi since 2001.

Ueda-sensei has a very deep interest in the shakuhachi, especially honkyoku. The first shakuhachi player to play in Noh Hamlet was Akikazu Nakamura who I believe played in just one performance at an outdoor Noh theater in Shizuoka Prefecture sometime before 1994. There's a video tape of this performance somewhere, and the shakuhachi playing was magical.

Ueda Sensei first invited me in 2001 to perform shakuhachi in a production of Noh Hamlet at the Kyoto Seminar House Noh stage outdoor theater held on 10/28/01. That was around the time I was granted my teaching license from the Myōan temple. I played "Mukaiji" in the Myōan style and "Daiwagaku" in the Jin Nyodō style that day. The performance was free and open to the public. As you know, shakuhachi is almost never performed in Noh, and for this performance I actually played from behind the curtain! I sat just offstage. At times I could see the actors as I played by peeking through the side of the curtain. Other times I couldn't see them at all. This was very interesting and comfortable because the audience certainly couldn't see me, a sort of Noh tengai if you will :)

As for Ueda-Sensei's input on the music, he told me at what points in the play that he wanted music, and what kind of feeling the music should express. His decision to use shakuhachi in Noh plays came directly from Kan'ami and Zeami. It is known that they used shakuhachi in Noh plays, though the shakuhachi then most likely was a very different kind than what we use today. After Ueda-sensei told me about this, I began investigate what I could and found further evidence of this fact in the book On the Art of No Drama translated by J. Thomas Rimer and Yamazaki Masakazu. In this book, it's written that there was actually a noh play by Kan'ami or Zeami entitled Shakuhachi. Given the Buddhist/Shinto Spiritual roots of Noh theater, that the founders were from Kansai, and the the Myoan Ryu shakuhachi temple is also in the same area, I think that Kan'ami must have been aware of the sound of the Myōan temple shakuhachi tunes. I have no idea if that was the kind of music he used for the plays. As for the exact pieces for Noh Hamlet, well, Ueda-Sensei left that up to me. I studied Hamlet quite a bit and knew the story very well. We also spent a lot time over meals discussing various elements of the play and what we though the characters were thinking, and we rehearsed the morning of the performance.

A few months later Ueda Sensei invited me to play again. This time it was for Noh Hamlet at the All-Japan Shakespeare Conference held at Meisei University in Tokyo on 5/15/02. I played "Chōshi" in the Jin Nyodō style and "Kyorei" in the Myōan style for the first time in Noh Hamlet.

And again a few months after that I performed in Noh Hamlet at a large cultural center in Tokorozawa. This was another free performance for Japanese students. There were several thousand people in attendance, perhaps the largest group I've ever played to. That day I played "Chōshi" and "Daiwagaku" in the Jin Nyodō style, and Myōan's "Kyorei". The third time's a charm. In almost every Noh play containing shakuhachi since then Myōan's "Kyorei" and Jin Nyodō's "Daiwagaku" have been performed. It seems to be the best combination for the scenes with shakuhachi, or the one with which I currently feel most comfortable. When Hamlet sits meditating in Zazen I usually play "Kyorei". That's the scene where the ghost of Ophelia appears and blesses/forgives Hamlet. Ueda sensei feels that honkyoku tunes match perfectly with Noh Hamlet, and I couldn't agree more. I usually play the Myōan Kyorei only in the lower register. The piece does contain parts in both octaves, but for Noh Hamlet because of time, and more because of how the lower register matches the meditation scene, I stay in the lower register.

I have been the shakuhachi player in Noh Hamlet a total of 12 times. We even used shakuahachi in a rendition of Noh Othello once in 2003. At times, I've brought up to two shakuhachi on stage at once. This I learned from Akikazu Nakamura as he had at least two on stage when he played in Noh Hamlet, and that is the only other time that I'm aware shakuhachi has ever been used in a modern Noh play. I generally brought a combination of 1.6, 1.8, 2.0 and I think even a 2.4 (that I borrowed). Most of the time I now use a 2.0 and bring just one flute on stage.

Interestingly shakuhachi was used in the the first English Noh play ever sanctioned by the Kanze school. It was my great honor and privilege to perform "Chōshi" in Jin Nyodo style and Myōan "Kyorei" in that production of Noh Hamlet on 10/15/06 in Miyakojima City in Okinawa. I played a standard 1.8 shakuhachi that day as requested by the Kanze school director. To date this remains one of the major highlights of my shakuhachi playing life.

Also, when the world premiere of Noh Hamlet in Japanese was played in Tokyo using professional Kanze school actors and musicians a shakuhachi was not used since you'd never really find it in use in a Kanze school production. That day, the normal nohkan flute (or maybe a longer one) was used by the Kanze school performer. As I had always been asked to choose the shakuhachi music for the English version of Noh Hamlet, I was very curious to hear what music the Kanze school performer would select. While I'm not exactly sure what piece he played, it sounded very much like "Kyorei" on the nohkan!

Here's today's crazy shakuhachi origin theory: in short, that they are imitation monkey bones. This is reportedly from TOYOHARA Muneaki 豊原統秋's 16th-century encyclopedia of Japanese music, the Taigen shō 體源抄, although my translation below is based on the transcription in SAITŌ Eisaburō 斎藤栄三郎's Shakuhachi: Sankyoku no sekai 尺八：三曲の世界 ("Shakuhachi: the world of sankyoku").

Incidentally, this is the Saitō Eisaburō, author of "The Secret of Jewish Power that Moves the World" (世界を動かすユダヤパワーの秘密).

It is written in one source that long ago the shakuhachi was an imitation of the marvelous sounds of the monkey's cries in the west of China. At that time, the monkeys in the mountains there had such miraculous voices that those who hear them are not only moved to tears but also find themselves with new resolve to stay on the path of righteousness. The prince left his palace to retire to a mountain temple, and all the administrators in the surrounding villages went with him, until finally hundreds of people, from monks to merchants, had awoken to the principle of impermanency in this way. Finally the emperor, thinking that this was no way to run a country, sent his soldiers out to kill the monkeys and put a stop to it all.

The results were pitiful beyond imagining. Dozens of those who had entered into the way of righteousness after hearing the cries of the monkeys now mourned and lamented the passing of their teachers, and among them was one whose grief was so deep that it did not abate though the years and months passed, and eventually he began to dig in the earth, wanting to at least see the bones of the fallen monkeys. He found an arm. It was hollow, and when he held it to the wind and listened, it sounded like the call of the monkey itself. Struck by the pitifulness of this, he took it home with him, and one day remembered he had it, put it to his mouth, and blew into it so that it would sound.

Later, a certain musician tried cutting bamboo to that length and blowing into it, but the sound was not the same. However, when he bore one hole in the bamboo and tried again, it began to sound slightly similar. As he bored hole after hole, the aural similarity grew, until finally the bamboo had four holes in the front and one in the back, and sounded exactly the same. The original bone having been one shaku eight sun long, the instrument was given the shortened name shakuhachi [literally "(one) shaku, eight (sun)"].

This is a great story, but let me note for future Googlers that the only part of it that is true is the etymology of the word shakuhachi.

In this week's Sayōnara Zetsubō-Sensei, for reasons too involved to explain here, the titular sensei ends up shouldering all the troubles of Japan's womanhood throughout history. Since I have nothing else to blog today, I thought I'd share those troubles with you.

• Share computer with parents
• School uniform is dorky
• Hair is unruly and hard to style in the morning
• Gained 3 kg over New Year's
• Got billed for 80,000 yen via Dial Q2 [an NTT service allowing third parties to bill phone users more easily]
• Cooking pots confiscated for war effort
• Kissed before marriage... [We are now back before WWII; note the kana/kanazukai change]
• Believe father has mekake [a kind of kept woman/mistress, and a tradition which underwent a renaissance in the Meiji period]
• Want to taste this so-called "iced cream"
• Sei Shōnagon is a smug and horrible person

That last one is the beginning of an infamous passage from Murasaki Shikibu's diary 紫式部日記, inevitably dragged out whenever female Heian authors are discussed:

清少納言こそしたり顔にいみじうはべりける人。さばかりさかしだち、真名書きちらしてはべるほども、よく見れば、まだいと足らぬこと多かり。かく、人に異ならむと思ひこのめる人は、かならず見劣りし、行く末うたてのみはべれば、艶になりぬる人は、いとすごうすずろなるをりも、もののあはれにすすみ、をかしきことも見すぐさぬほどに、おのづからさるまじくあだなるさまにもはべるべし。そのあだになりぬる人の果て、いかでかはよくはべらむ。

Sei Shōnagon is a smug and horrible person. She acts so smart and is always writing in true [Chinese] characters, but if you look closely, you can find lots of mistakes. People who try that hard to be different from everyone else always end up falling behind, with trouble waiting in their future; and people who are that affected act all mono no aware and attend all the interesting events even when they're lonely and bored, so that in the end the affectation stops being an act. How exactly are things going to end well for a person like that? [They are not.]

Another object lesson from the early modern Translation Wars: Japanese plays (versified) (love the parentheses there), published 1890 and credited to "the late Thomas Russell Hillier McClatchie, interpreter, H.B.M.'s Consular Service, Japan; edited by his brother, Ernest S. McClatchie (author of 'False Plumage,' 'Stefan Melikof,' &c.)." Oh, those McClatchie brothers.

"This book," Ernest McClatchie explains in the preface to the new edition, "was originally published at Yokohama eleven years ago, and—taking into consideration its success out there—it has been thought fit to bring out a New Edition, in the hope of the rhymes being found of some interest to readers in England, who may desire to become better acquainted with the style and character of play-acting in the Far East."

On the other hand, the preface to the first edition disclaims the whole collection as mere "efforts to sketch, in a cursory manner, the general outline of the plots of these drama," which despite the repetition of the "style and character" thing in the next sentence raises serious questions about the extent to which readers in England would become even slightly better acquainted with the style or character of Far Eastern play-acting.

The original preface continues:

A Japanese play, as a rule, lasts for many hours, and it is questionable whether it would, if literally and fully translated, possess any interest for the foreign reader. The plan here followed has been to select one personage as the hero or heroine, and to give an outline of those scenes only in which that particular personage appears; for this reason several of these rhymes are termed 'Fragments'. A Japanese audience, though certainly sympathetic, differs considerably from a foreign one: the spectators here are by no means averse to showing their amusement when an unfortunate woman is murdered by mistake, but are easily moved to tears when the murderer finally commits suicide after a long speech garnished with grandiloquent allusions to the spirit of 'loyalty' that caused him to perpetrate the outrage in the first instance. Thus, in endeavouring to versify these plays, no style has appeared so apt as that of the "Ingoldsby Legends," that delightful mixture of pathos and bathos, of true poetic expression and of jingling rhyme. This idea has been kept in view throughout.

I am, I confess with shame, unfamiliar with the Ingoldsby Legends. Still, the idea is quite clear from the very first chapter, entitled "Hayano Kampei" and introduced as a "fragment from the play of the Chiusbin-gura," i.e., the treasury of loyal bottles. (Ha! No, is my joke for print mistake of "b" for "h".)

Yoichibei, leading a woodcutter's life,
Is bless'd with that treasure,— a virtuous wife;
And, as happens with most married folks who agree,
The pair are as happy as happy can be:
   Though lowly their lot,
   And humble their cot,
Though the winds may blow chill, or the sun beat down hot,—
Yet little they reck, in their mountain retreat,
Of the strife of the city that lies at their feet;
Content with each other, they dwell in the hills,
Each halving the other's joys, labours, and ills;
   Their pleasures they share,
   Their trials they bear,
And, in fact, all their neighbours are wont to declare
That they never yet saw such a jolly old pair!

And it just goes on like this. Characters are spared no indignity if a rhyme is at stake. When the forty-seven ronin see their daimyō forced to commit hara-kiri, their principal response is to "growl like the deuce", so that the next line can end with "use." A robber "settle[s] Yochibei's 'hash'" on the road solely to rhyme with "flash."

And the macaronisms! Here's a bit that incorporates material from three external languages in as many lines:

So dutiful, charming, so gay and so free,
And possessed, above all, with happy esprit;
Her tasty attire might a Shôguness vex,—
"Munditiis," Horace would tell us, "simplex"!

Ah, for the days when you could expect a mass audience to know how many syllables to pronounce "munditiis" with. Not that McClatchie expected his audience to remember all their lessons:

   Straightaway all his joy
   Turns to 'otototoi,
(That's a word, reader, known to the youngest school-boy;
But if you by chance have forgotten your Greek,
To enlighten your ignorance here I will speak;—
Victor Hugo explains it, then, dearest lecteur,
As a term that parfaitement exprime la douleur).

"The Enchanted Palace" on page 97 is another highlight. McClatchie introduces it as "a fragment from the original Japanese play of 'Saiyuki' ('A Trip in the West')", which is by far the aptest rendering into English of that title I've ever seen. Oddly, McClatchie selects as his hero not the irrepressable Monkey but rather "Bishop Sanzô, that eminent man/ The most popular preacher in all Hindostan!" (I should note, however, that McClatchie later claims that "Bisho Sanzô" can play the banjo and tin whistle, which leads me to doubt this "popular" story.)

McClatchie's work clearly bears some resemblance to Shōyō's jōruri Julius: free adaptation into a form both wildly different from the original and highly specific to the target culture. The obvious difference is tone: McClatchie is jovial, Shōyō deadly serious.

Of course, light verse does not lend itself to solemnity, nor jōruri to slapstick, so perhaps it would be better to identify the main difference as intention. Although both translations are framed as attempts to make the source material accessible outside the original language, McClatchie strives first and foremost (and perhaps a little too hard) to entertain his readers — who, after all, he expects to be seeking only "some slight acquaintance" with the original. Shōyō, on the other hand, wanted to improve his readers, and indeed their entire culture. To judge from his own statements, his injection of Julius Caesar into the jōruri form was not caprice, but rather an earnest attempt to hybridize Shakespeare with traditional Japanese theater to create a new art combining the strengths of both. This is the Meiji Japan-Contemporary Europe relationship in a nutshell.

Another popular song via Kurata, this one from the 1920s and entitled Sendō kouta 船頭小歌 ("Song of the boatman"), with lyrics by NOGUCHI Ujō 野口雨情, music by NAKAYAMA Shimpei 中山晋平. I've translated it into a blues form as an act of ethnocentric violence which uproots the text from the language and culture that gave it life.

I'm just a clump of withered reeds on a dry riverbed
Yeah, I'm a bunch of withered reeds on a dry riverbed
You're nothing but dry reeds too, baby
No blossoms, already half-dead

But living or dying don't seem to matter no more
Living or dying don't seem to matter no more
Let's go down to the Tone River, baby
Find work pulling those oars

Through the rice growing wild, I see the rising moon
Oh, through the rice that grows wild, I see the rising moon
I'm headed for the Tone River
And I'll be leaving real soon

The wind blows cold on withered reeds like you and I
Yeah, the wind blows so coldly on old reeds like you and I
When you cry those hot tears
Maybe the moon will dry your eyes

As Sey NISHIMURA explains in "Retrospective Comprehension: Japanese Foretelling Songs", this song was thought guilty of terrible crimes against the nation:

Shortly after the earthquake [of 1923] [this song] came to be regarded as having foretold the destruction of Tokyo, predicting that the blossoming metropolis would be turned into a wilderness covered by plume grass [the "reeds" in my version]. Spreading among the shaken people, the allusive lyrics of the song persuaded so many that this song eventually became recorded as "the modern outbreak" of the foretelling songs.

Kurata provides a contemporary comment (also available here), from novelist KŌDA Rohan 幸田露伴:

Before the recent great earthquake and fire in which so many men and women died, a song beginning "I'm a bunch of withered reeds on a dry riverbed..." became popular, with even children joining in the singing, and particularly popular in Kōtō, both sung and whistled. This song's lyrics and melody alike were pathetic and miserable, enough to fill one with loathing. It began as a song in a movie, and so it was certainly not intended as a prophecy of the recent tragedy or anything like that, but now that the great earthquake and fire have occurred, and so many have indeed become like withered reeds on a dry riverbed [...] people have stopped singing the song entirely; still, it is unpleasant to recall.

More from KURATA Yoshihiro's Archaeology of popular song:

In December of Meiji 10 [1877], TSUJI Shinji 辻新次 [who was vice-Minister of Education at the time], thinking that the Shōka shū 唱歌集 anthology [of songs for use in schools, with Western-style music and Japanese words] should not only "cultivate the students' moral character" but also "clear away the outdated conventions of folk song," ordered the revision of such songs as "Nemureyo ko" ("Sleep, child"). Here I give just the second verse:

  Sleep, child/ Children who sleep soundly/ get a pinwheel/ drums, and/ a flute/ Sleep, child
  ねむれよ子　よくねるこには　風車　つゞみに太鼓　ふえやるぞ　ねむれよ子

These lyrics, Tsuji said [...] would be fine if you gave the child these gifts when they woke. But if you did not, you would have tricked the child into sleeping, and what kind of adult would a child habitually deceived by their mother grow up to be? In short, the lyrics would "damage their moral character." Remarks like this afford us considerable insight into the educational ideology of the Meiji period.

And, lo and behold, the official version has verses like this instead:

Sleep, child/ Children who sleep soundly are sure to obey their fathers/ Sleep, child
ねむれよ子 よくねるちごは ちゝのみの 父のおほせや まもるらん ねむれよ子

The more you read about the Meiji government's clumsy, knitting-with-cabers attempts at social engineering via musical education, the more you understand the success of the dōyō 童謡 movement: (relatively) non-goody-goody, non-lame songs for children, and no governmental interference. Because the government that is big enough to give you a pinwheel and a flute when you wake up is also big enough to take it away and make you obey instead.