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.)...

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")....

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....

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....

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....

More from KURATA Yoshihiro's Archaeology of popular song:...