Patterns, Phrases and Groupings in Honkyoku music


for the Japanese Shakuhachi

Bruno Deschênes, musician, composer, independent researcher

Abstract

The solo écouteur the Japanese shakuhachi composed by the monks of the Fuke sect, a Zen

Buddhist sect, during Japan’s Edo period (1603-1868), have few aspects that are distinctive from

most other types of music: they are made of short phrases, some of them with a single tone,

separated by obligatory breathing and silences that break the flow of the melody. Most of these

pieces, either from traditional or modern repertoires, have no rhythm as the term is commonly

defined, except possibly for a kind of non regular and relax pulse that gives these pieces a

somewhat meditative character. In performance, the musician determines both the duration of

phrases and the silences between them. It has been suggested that the composition of traditional

Japanese music is based on predefined patterns that are rearranged to create new melodies. Few

authors have tackled the issue of patterns in honkyoku music for the shakuhachi (in particular,

Weisgarber 1968, Stanfield 1977). However, one aspect that has not been thoroughly analyzed

regarding this unique music: the grouping of phrases piece. In this article, the author takes a

fresh look at patterns and phrases in that music, as well as the possible role of the grouping of

phrases.

Keyword : honkyoku, shakuhachi, Japanese music, ethnomusicology, grouping, patterns.

1
 Patterns, Phrases and Groupings in Honkyoku music


for the Japanese Shakuhachi

Bruno Deschênes, musician, composer, independent researcher

Please note: This draft has not been proofread or edited.

The honkyoku repertoires for the Japanese shakuhachi composed by the monks of the Fuke

sect during the Edo period (1603-1868) has a distinctive character compared to most other types

of music: each piece is made of relatively short phrases that most of the time have only a few

tones, sometimes a single one, separated by obligatory breathing and silences between them.

Breathing creates silences between phrases and are thus an integral part of the aesthetic of this

unique music. Most of these pieces have no beat, no imposed linear rhythmic structure, except

for a slow meditative and irregular pulse, the tempo of which can vary from one musician to

another, from one performance to another.1 Both the duration of phrases and silences between

phrases are left to the musician during a performance. They can be long during a performance on

a given day, short the next time, depending on the musician's state of mind when performing.

These silences do not need, and even should not have to have the same duration between phrases,

to give breath to the flow of the music. As well, each phrase is not necessarily performed at the

same speed. One phrase with only a few tones may be played very slowly, followed by one with

1As an analogy, this pulse could be viewed as if one is walking in the forest at a steady pace without being regular,
one’s flow being free, thus irregular.

2
a large number of tones that forces the musician to play faster.2 The most critical point in this

regard is that every phrase must be played within one breath. As already mentioned, some

phrases may have a single tone, at times preceded by an articulation of some sort or a movement

of the head and lips that slightly alter that tone. The speed of a phrase to come may influence the

duration of the silence that precedes it, though grouping of phrases, as we will see later, plays a

crucial role in determining the duration of silences between phrases.

Few ethnomusicologists, in particular Alison MacQueen Tokita (1996, 1999, 2000) and

Yosihiko Tokumaru (2000), are positing that traditional Japanese music, in particular in kabuki

theatre, but not exclusively, is based on predetermined patterns, melodic cells, or what

MacQueen Tokita formulaic forms, that are used to create new melodies. Are the composition of

the pieces of the honkyoku repertoires based on patterns or melodic cells? This particular music

was not composed for entertainment. During the Edo period, the monks of the Fuke sect did not

consider these pieces as music. The shakuhachi was for them a spiritual tool, not a music

instrument. Moreover, these monks were not allowed to play folk songs or popular songs heard

in the pleasure quarters, including songs from kabuki theatre.3 In this regard, it can be suggested

that these monks were not bound by particular melodic, modal and rhythmic rules in composing

their pieces as were other genres of music at the time.

Concerning the shakuhachi, we find so far only one article and two dissertations that

investigate the issue of patterns or melodic cells in the honkyoku repertoire, the name given to

this repertoire composed by these monks, the article is by Elliott Weisgarber (1968) and the

2 The phrases of traditional pieces usually have few tones, while modern pieces have phrases with a larger number of
tones, including being more technical.
3Also, they were not allowed to teach to the population, though this rule was not well enforced. Some schools were
established around Tokyo.

3
dissertations by Norman Stanfield (1977) and by shakuhachi player Gunnar Linder (2012).4 As it

pertains to phrases as the basic unit of these pieces, Andreas Gutzwiller (1974) and Riley Lee

(1992) are the two main authors who have analyzed that aspect of the honkyoku repertoire,

though Stanfield and Linder discuss it as well. As for groupings, besides a recent article by this

author (Deschênes 2017), only Stanfield among these authors raised the issue.

The overall structures of the pieces of the honkyoku repertoires can be analyzed from three

different standpoints, as we will see in what follows. A first one is that each phrase within a piece

is made of patterns or melodic cells. The traditional pieces composed by the monks of the Fuke

sect usually have a single pattern, rarely two patterns, while modern versions of these solo pieces

and new pieces might incorporate few melodic cells. A second perspective is that the phrase is

the basic structure of a piece, the patterns or melodic cells being somehow of secondary concern.

A third viewpoint is that sets of phrases can be grouped to form larger phrases, while still

maintaining the regular breaths and silences between each of the phrases within that group.5

These three standpoints will be discussed here in the following order: patterns, phrases, and

groupings. Regarding patterns, following a presentation of Weisgarber’s and Stanfield’s articles,

I thought it appropriate to include a short comparative discussion from McQueen Tokita and

Tokumaru and their analysis of shamisen music, something all the authors I refer to here do not

do, to find out if this could give us a better understanding of the use of patterns in honkyoku

music. I aim to show that although the pieces of the honkyoku repertoire have distinctly separated

phrases, their basic units are as much the patterns, the phrases, as the grouping of phrases upon

4 We can notice the large time lap between Weisgarber’s article and Stanfield’s dissertation and Linder’s dissertation.
5 Discussing the question of modes and melodic structures is beyond the scope of this paper.

4
which these pieces have been composed, not one or the other, as the authors I present here

suggest.

Patterns

The two principal authors to present in English a notion of patterns in honkyoku music are

Elliot Weisgarber (1968) and Norman Stanfield (1977). According to Weisgarber, over three

hundred patterns of cells are found in honkyoku music. Phrases and patterns within pieces are

constructed based on two main scales.6,7 However, the main point of his analysis is specifically

geared toward how tones are arranged into melodic patterns as they are used within phrases,

these patterns being the basic material upon which honkyoku phrases and pieces are composed.

However, he does not consider styles or schools of playing, such as the Kinko traditional school,

the Tozan School, or other schools, either modern or traditional, in which patterns use can differ

from one to another. Weisgarber analyses few pieces to show the recurrence and combining of

these patterns to form phrases and consequently pieces, giving as an example at the end of his

article, a list of patterns found in two pieces he analyzed. For Weisgarber, the logic of honkyoku

pieces is in the way these patterns are arranged “in new guises and new relationships” (1968:

332) within any piece. According to him, these pieces form a vast and single composition in

6 Similarly to Andreas Gutzwiller which I discuss below, he uses the term scale while it should be mode, as well as
other terms from Western musicology. Alison McQueen Tokita indicates that it is common among Japanese
musicologists to view scale and mode as synonyms, while European musicology clearly distinguishes them
(1996:1-3). According to her, the proper term should be mode, not scale. A scale refers to notes, while mode refers to
the way notes are arranged. Moreover, the use of the note is also misleading. Note is a typically European musical
term. In honkyoku music, some tones do not have pitch, and cannot be qualified as notes. There is no clear historical
indication that these pieces were based on such notion. In a master class I took in December 2015 with Japanese
shakuhachi master Kakizakai Kaoru, one of the first thing he said was that honkyoku melodies are tone-colour
melodies.
7 Though its importance, the modal aspect of that music is beyond the scope of this paper. For more detailed
discussions, see McQueen Tokita (1996), as well as Stanfield’s thesis (1977), Gutzwiller’s dissertation (1972) and
Bruno Deschênes (2019).

5
which we hear the recurrence of significant patterns rearranged, permuted, which creates a strong

sense of unity (1968: 332).

Andreas Gutzwiller and Riley Lee raised some critics of Weisgarber’s views about

patterns. Gutzwiller questions the logic of Weisgarber’s notions of patterns. For him, there is not

much logic in “numbering” patterns and “listing” their sequences in the pieces analyzed, though

Weisgarber believes that the arrangement of these patterns follows its own “logic” (Weisgarber

1968:324). For Gutzwiller, the aesthetic of honkyoku is in its indeterminacy, an indeterminacy

that is found in two concepts: “form of blowing” and “form of thinking” that can take shapes in

performance (Gutzwiller 1974:132-134). For Gutzwiller, the basic unit of these pieces is the

phrase and how they are played aesthetically by the musician, viewing patterns as secondary. In a

way, the viewpoint of Weisgarber is about the microstructure of that music, while Gutzwiller’s is

about its macrostructure. As for Riley Lee, he indicates that Weisgarber ignores segments of

phrases that he did not label as patterns. Such notion of patterns should be directed at all tones

within a phrase, which is not always the case in Weisgarber’s analysis. As for my understanding

of his analysis, I would suggest that he tried to show the use of patterns in honkyoku music. I do

not believe that he had in mind to submit a thorough analysis of that music, i.e., of all its patterns

(1968: 332), but to give a general overview of the role patterns may play in honkyoku music. His

analysis should be viewed more as a preliminary step for a more thorough analysis, especially

that his analysis is concerned with a unique school of shakuhachi, while there are numerous one,

traditional from before the XXe century, from the first half of the XXe century and more recent

ones from after WWII, each dealing with patterns in different ways.

6
 As for Norman Stanfield, a student of Weisgarber, he talks about pitch, patterns (called

senritsukei in Japanese, a term his professor does not use), phrases and sentences, all constituents

of honkyoku pieces (1977:127-167). Distinctively from Weisgarber and Gutzwiller, one of the

central and basic structural characteristics of honkyoku patterns is, according to Stanfield, the

proclivity of a pitch to resolve as a cadence to another tone (1977: 117). Patterns having few

tones, such proclivity shows a hierarchy among the pitches, such as pivot tones and subsidiary

tones alongside leading tones, a point that Gutzwiller also raised. These cadences are a structural

characteristic of these melodic patterns (Stanfield 1977: 127-128). Moreover, a pattern does not

always recur the same every time; they might show a variance from one piece to another, even

between occurrences within a piece. In other words, these patterns do not have fixed and definite

melodic forms, contrary to what Weisgarber seems to be suggesting. Some tones with a pattern

can vary in pitch, particularly the subsidiary tones that could modulate by half a tone or more

between occurrences. Precision in pitch is found mainly among the leading tones.8 As few of the

authors cited here, Stanfield uses Western classical music term, such as tonic, modality, scale,

dominant, fundamental tone, theme, coda, pitch, for example, terms that do not apply as these

terms and notions are defined in European classical music.

As for phrases, Stanfield indicates quite surprisingly that each phrase consists of two or

more patterns (1977: 136), while Gutzwiller suggests that there could be phrases comprising only

a single tone. Since single tone phrases do not have pivot or leading tones, the question of

proclivity proposed by Stanfield cannot be applied as a general rule. This author suggests as well

that this cadential proclivity is not found solely within patterns, but as well within a phrase,

8 Though not in the same sense given to such precision in European classical music.

7
between patterns. Thus the last pattern in a phrase brings a resolution of the phrase not only that

last pattern. As for breathing between phrases, which Gutzwiller and Lee strongly emphasizes,

both Weisgarber and Stanfield say near to nothing about it, except that they are taken “in-tempo,”

without clearly stating what both authors mean by that. As mentioned earlier, the duration of

breathing and silences between phrases created cannot be “in-tempo” since, on the one hand,

there is no real tempo; these pieces are performed through a free, non-regular and non-linear

pulse. The pulse comes from the breath of the performer, at whatever speed that may be. On the

other, the musician’s state of mind at the time of playing changes from one performance to

another, as Gutzwiller suggests about “form of blowing” and “form of thinking,” thus altering

the duration of these silences and even the flow of the phrases. The question of tempo in

honkyoku pieces is much more elastic than with any music in which a clearly defined rhythmic

structure is crucial to the performance of its melodic structure. In honkyoku, the silences the

breaths impose in the flow of the melody are as important as the phrases themselves. They are

part of the aesthetic of that music. They are not an absence of sound, as silence is usually defined

in Western music. It could be suggested that the sounds and phrases come out of silence to return

to it, making it as aesthetically important as the quality of the tones themselves. These silences

are as much a basic structural unit as patterns and phrases, except that it can only be grasped

from the performance of these pieces, not from a score.

A third and last author worth mentioning here is Swedish shakuhachi player Gunnar Linder

(2012). Linder distinguishes between sound patterns, sound idioms and phrases.9 His

presentation of sound patterns and phrases are in line with what these two authors are suggesting.

9 It is worth mentioning that he does not refer at all to both Weisgarber’s article and Stanfield’s dissertation.

8
As for sound idioms, they are the ornaments or articulations that the player adds to tones in his

playing of a piece, ornaments or articulations that are usually not indicated in a score and which

can alter a pattern. When they are indicated, it is minimally. Stanfield also raises the issue of

articulations, suggesting that what is found in a score and how a musician performs a piece will

not always be the same (Stanfield, 1977: 100-106). Some of these ornaments can be found in all

styles, both traditional and modern; some are particular to a style; while others can be unique to a

musician. These idioms are used as expressive and aesthetic devices, not specifically technical

ones, though a musician need the proper technique to do them properly. It is up to the musician

to invoke them or not in the expressive flow when performing a piece; they are usually used

parsimoniously. According to all the authors mentioned here, phrases on the shakuhachi are

ideally played in one breath, though Linder points out that this is not always the case. A long

phrase could be split, so to speak, into shorter ones, with breathing between them; yet, he does

not venture into suggesting that this could represent the grouping of phrases. Linder too,

similarly to Gutzwiller as we will see below, views phrases as the smallest meaningful units, not

patterns, though he indicates that phrases are comprised of one or more sound patterns and sound

idioms (Linder 2012: 271-2). As well, he does not discuss the role of breathing and silences

between phrases.

Patterns in Shamisen Music

Several musicologists and ethnomusicologists, both Japanese and non-Japanese, have

suggested that traditional Japanese music is based on patterns or melodic cells. Among the

authors analyzing honkyoku music presented here, no one looked at comparing shakuhachi music

9
with other forms of traditional Japanese music in this regard. Here I would like to give a succinct

overview of the use of patterns in shamisen music, to see if this could help us make better sense

of the role of patterns and phrases in honkyoku music for shakuhachi.

According to Alison McQueen Tokita (1996, 1999, 2000), continuity in performance

practice in traditional Japanese music and stage arts is obtained by what she calls formulaic

material, in other words, patterns or melodic cells. In most of these art forms, these formulae

have specific names allowing musicians to recognize and identify them. Thus, as dance and

dramatic movements use kata, i.e., predefined patterns, musical patterning is found among all

genres of music, though she does not say anything about shakuhachi music. For example, in

heikyoku narratives, gidayū puppet theatre music and kabuki theatre dance music, two terms are

used to refer to the use of patterns: kyokusetsu, about the recurrence of long passages of music,

and senritsukei (a term mentioned by Stanfield), which refers to short recurrent phrases. The

writing of these musics is based on the ordering or arrangement of pre-existing formulaic

musical materials, improvisation being almost non-existent. Yet, these patterns or melodic

formulas are not entirely fixed, thus allowing for variations in writing a song or in performance,

while maintaining their original identity (2000: 24).10 For example, in both narrative music and

text, recurrent patterns usually have names. The crucial function of these patterns is that they can

be easily identified when called on by a teacher to her or his pupils; the memorization of these

patterns is linked to their name.11

10The same type of formulaic patterning is also found in poetry. It is believed that poetry does not create anything
new. It is simply the rearranging of existing known words and metaphors into new ones.
11 See Tomie Hahn (2007) for a similar discussion of named kata in the traditional Japanese dance nihon buyo.

10
 Interestingly, McQueen Tokita indicates that in shamisen music, in some situations, it is not

possible to know when a pattern begins and ends, the reason being that they can be merged with

other patterns in the flow of melodies in different ways. Usually, the patterns identified from

beginning to the end are sections, instrumental interludes or quotations, i.e. kyokusetsu. In this

sense, patterning can be found as much at the level of a piece, of sections as of phrases, although

not all phrases make use of patterns, and not all sections used formulaic patterns (1996:102). In

shamisen music, the melodic formulas tend to occur in sequences with other patterns. There can

then be variation, expansion, contraction or rhythmic change depending on which patterns follow

another pattern, while pitch changes are usually minimized to maintain the character of the mode

used for the piece in which it is heard (1999:130-1). She also mentions that there are patterns for

both the voice and the shamisen in shamisen music, while the are patterns that are strictly for the

shamisen (1999:159).

According to Yosihiko Tokumaru, there are two ways of composing for the shamisen. The

first one is based on tones, the other on melodic patterns, cells or formulas. Composing melodies

is entirely different from what is meant in European music. There is no sense of strict tuning,

though there is a sense of a mode, the tuning of pitches being not clearly defined and respected.

He mentions that a jump of a 9th, for example, can be considered a jump of an octave. As for

patterns, Tokumaru distinguishes two types. The first type concerns melodic patterns produced

through the process of arranging musical elements according to the probability of their

combinations, in other words, as McQueen Tokita mentions, by reordering and rearranging

groups of patterns to create a new melody, to which could be added new patterns not present in

the lexicon. This way of composing is found among all genres of shamisen music. The second

11
one concerns independent segments that traditional musicians learn by heart and that can be

found only in certain genres; at times such segment can be a known melody. In line with

McQueen Tokita, Tokumaru indicates that a melody is created by chaining up melodic patterns

one after another. Though they can be altered, this can be done solely according to rules specific

to a style. Patterns can even be truncated when merged with others. For these reasons, according

to Tokumaru, it is difficult to analyze a piece in terms of clearly defined cells (2000:61).

McQueen Tokita concurs with that point.

Another Look at Patterns in Honkyoku

Few historical points must be clarified about the komusō mendicant monks of the Fuke sect

playing these pieces during the Edo period. These monks considered the shakuhachi to be a

hokki, a spiritual tool, not a gakki, a musical instrument; what they were playing was, for them,

not music. Besides, a decree by the shogun forbid them to play popular or folk songs of any kind,

though this was not enforced (in fact, the shogun had a hard time controlling them). It could be

suggested that thanks to that decree, their music could remain distinct from the ones the general

population were hearing in theatres, in the pleasure quarters or during festivals. These monks

had, so to speak, a “leeway” in composing their pieces that other forms of music did not have.

They were not as constrained by specific rhythms or melodic structures, the use of particular

modes, or following the guidelines of a style, as was the case with kabuki or puppet theatres, for

example, though they were, of course, influenced by what they heard around, including in the

12
pleasure quarters that some of these monks visited.12 Some temples created their particular

styles; some styles were particular to some regions. There was as well different styles of playing

between the East and the West, and between regions. An example is the Kimpu-ryū style from

the town of Hirosaki in Aomori. A style created in northern Kyūshu, found in Tokyo for a while.

It ended up in Hirosaki, in the prefecture of Aomori, north of Japan, while disappearing

everywhere else. The samurais playing the shakuhachi in that city were not monks; they did not

join the ranks the Fuke sect. As well, the style of the regions north of Tokyo differed from the

ones found in Tokyo and the south. These mendicant monks were found all the way down the

northern half of Kyūshu island, though not in the southern half or on the island of Ryūkyū,

today’s Okinawa, and Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan.

There are obvious differences between the formulaic material of the shakuhachi and the

shamisen music. Weisgarber and Stanfield do not indicate if there are named patterns, and the

Japanese sensei (teachers/masters) I studied with never mentioned anything about named

patterns, or simply patterns or melodic cells. As McQueen Tokita and Tokumaru tell us, in

shamisen music named patterns serve as mnemonic devices. Patterns allow pupils and musicians

to learn and memorize long melodic forms, while in honkyoku, pupils learned pieces phrase by

phrase. In this sense, the focus in this learning is about clearly bounded phrases played within a

single breath.13

12The shogun decreed that only rōnin (wandering, thus masterless samurais) could join the rank of the Fuke sect. As
Sanford (1977) shows, a large number of these monks were in fact rōnin in disguised (for example, serving as spies
for the shogun; some being gangsters and crooks), though, of course, a good number of them were real monks, and
were honestly playing the shakuhachi.
13In nō or kabuki theatres as well as in gagaku court music, for example, is used what is called shōga, a mnemonic
set of vocal syllables that represents the different sounds produced by an instrument. Japanese taiko (drum) also us
such mnemonic devices. For example, with the shamisen the shōga mnemonics indicate if a note is produced on an
open string or a press string, for example (Tokumaru 1991). However, no shōga as such exists for the shakuhachi,
except a form of sight-reading developed at the beginning of the 20th century (Lee 1992: 224-225).

13
 Yet, we can be pinpointed few similarities between shamisen and shakuhachi musics. The

pattern in honkyoku music may or may not be played exactly the same every time, as is the case

with shamisen music, though they are usually notated the same in a score. The phrase and the

patterns keep their “identity” (to use this term from McQueen Tokita), although they might be

some variations during a performance, as Tokumaru indicates. In particular, the ornaments or

articulations, what Linder called sound idioms, can alter how a pattern. These ornaments can also

be used differently to the same pattern in a piece, or from one performance to another, thus

slightly altering the “identity” of these patterns.

Patterns in honkyoku music cannot be brought into some kind of general vocabulary as can

be found in shamisen music or nihon buyo traditional Japanese dance, among others.14 A

honkyoku piece may have been composed around a group of patterns that are particular to that

piece, and may not be found or rarely encountered in other pieces either of the same school or

other schools. As mentioned above, there are common patterns used by all schools of

shakuhachi, while some are unique to a school or a musician. Moreover, patterns in honkyoku

music are not structural in the same way as is found in shamisen music or nihon buyo dance.

Because these pieces were not composed for and thus considered as entertainment music, the

rules in applying them are much looser than with other Japanese stage art forms. The sound

idioms could be viewed more as “aesthetic” idioms than purely musical ones. A score cannot

convey them; it can be only in performance. For this reason, they may alter how patterns or

phrases are played and sounded. The same piece played by different players from different

14 See Tomie Hahn (2007).

14
schools, for example, might sound differently, both because of the style and their use of these

sound idioms.

Since the shakuhachi was not tuned according to a mode during the Edo period, and since

the shakuhachi was not a music instrument for these monks, the question of tuning and exact

pitch did not have much bearing on composing and playing these pieces. In the second half of the

19th century, that concern about tuning gained attention when shakuhachi players started to play

alongside the koto and the shamisen; these instruments had to be in tune together, though not as

perfectly as in European music at the time.15 Playing in tune has also been influenced by the

advent of Western music, Japanese musicians discovering that many different instruments could

play together, something that required the shakuhachi to be in tune with any other instruments,

either Japanese or foreign origins.16 It could be suggested that the playing of honkyoku music

during the Edo period was not how the melody of a piece follows a particular mode, but would

be more how tones are related to each other, irreverent to a particular mode. In other words, an

aspect of playing these pieces is not the tuning of that bamboo flute or the tones being played but

the intervallic quality between the tones, and their cadential proclivity, as suggested by Stanfield.

According to McQueen Tokita (1996), Japanese musicologist Koizumi Fumio

(1927-1983), following the work of a musicologist from the Meiji Period (1868-1912) Uehara

Rokushirō (1848-1913), viewed Japanese music as being constructed on what has been called by

15The shakuhachi replaced the kokyū, an upright fiddle made similarly to a shamisen. Since then, this fiddle is
mainly heard in some folk styles from central and northeast of Japan.
16 During the Edo period, the monks were roughly making themselves their flutes, tuning it according to a system of
calculation called towari or kyūhan-wari. The holes were placed according to a division by 10 or 9.5 of the length of
the bamboo piece. At the end of the 19th century, professional shakuhachi makers will surface so that these bamboo
flutes could be made to compete with Western instruments, altering accordingly the position of the holes to bring the
flute more in tune with this foreign music and instruments. In the 1970s and 1980s, new techniques were developed
so that they could be tuned more closely to the Western tempered scale. Today, few makers are using modern
acoustic for this aim.

15
Japanese musicologists “tetrachords,” groups of three tones (more specifically a triad), the first

and third tones being a fourth apart, thus the use of the term tetrachord.17 For Koizumi,

traditional Japanese music is based on four such tetrachords when grouped they form what could

be considered four modes. However, these modes do not have a tonal centre as is current in

Western music or any other modal music. Koizumi calls the first and third tones of the

tetrachords kakuon, i.e., nuclear tones (fig. 1).18 In Koizumi’s line of thought, each of these

modes is created by bringing together the same tetrachord twice. As a result, these modes have

four tonal centres, or four kakuon, instead of a single tonal centre as is usual in a mode, at least

from a European music perspective. The middle tone between the two nuclear tones of these

tetrachords is never clearly in tune with the nuclear tones, similarly to Stanfield’s pivot tones in

honkyoku music. That tone can vary up to half a tone, either up or down. In this line of thought,

the cadential or proclivity characteristic of the patterns in honkyoku as shown by Stanfield are

better understood when analyzed from the viewpoint of Koizumi’s notion of tetrachords than

from the perspective of a mode in the usual sense of the term. For this Japanese musicologist,

these nuclear tones are the frameworks of pitches upon which melodies are composed. Though

Koizumi, as well as McQueen Tokita, say nothing about honkyoku music, this idea of

frameworks of pitches based on nuclear tones is, I believe, directly applicable to creating patterns

and phrases in this particular music. The flow and continuity of the melody are not found in the

17Musicologists critic this misuse (or misinterpretation) of that term. In classical music and other music, tetrachord
solely refers to a group of four notes.

They could be equated with Stanfield’s as well as Gutzwiller’s leading tones. Both authors, though, do not refer to
18
Koizumi’s work.

16
pitch structure based on a mode, but more based explicitly on nuclear tones and their relative

cadential proclivity toward each other within these tetrachords.19

Figure 1. Koizumi Fumio’s four modes. The whole notes indicate the kakuon, 


or nuclear tones, while the quarter tones, the subsidiary tones 


(Cf. McQueen Tokita (1996: 6)).

Following up on Koizumi’s notion of tetrachords, I suggest in a 2017 article that we should

focus more on the relative and aesthetic tuning of intervals within patterns and phrases, not on

their pitch per se. The way this flute is made does not allow to play perfectly in tune according to

a particular mode or scale, especially the tempered scale, among others, even with the modern

version of the shakuhachi. Until the end of the 19th century, the tuning was such that the interval

of fourth was not the exact fourth we hear today on the modern shakuhachi. It is only following

the advent of shakuhachi makers that this interval started to be more “precise,” more so today. In

this line of thought, possibly one of the most important points a musician should be careful of

when performing a solo honkyoku piece is not about being in tune according to a mode or strictly

defined intervals, but producing intervals that sound musical to the ear, even though they may be

imperfect. In this sense, the intervals should be viewed as a quality of sound relating two tones,

not some kind of distance or span between two independent pitches.

19 A more thorough analysis of this aspect of honkyoku music is beyond the scope of this paper.

17
Phrases

In his 1974 PhD dissertation, Swiss shakuhachi player Andreas B. Gutzwiller suggests that

the basic unit of honkyoku pieces is the phrase, and the primary unit of the phrase is the note,

considering that there are phrases that may have a single tone. He disagrees with the view that

patterns or melodic cells, as proposed by Weisgarber (1968), played a role in the composition of

these pieces. He defines a note as a process of a sound preceded and followed by other notes to

form a phrase (1974: 100). According to Gutzwiller, in honkyoku pieces groups of notes do not

form a melody in the usual sense of the term. These groups form phrases that are delimited by

obligatory breathing and silences, the phrase being the “indivisible” basic unit of these pieces,

not the notes, or tones, or patterns as proposed by Weisgarber (1974: 99-100). These phrases are

somehow independent from one another, the silences created by the breathing being as crucial to

the aesthetic character of this music as the phrases themselves. For Gutzwiller, these pieces have

been composed by the permutation of what he calls phrase-materials, not patterns (1994: 137).

One of Gutzwiller’s main critics about Weisgarber’s analysis of patterns or cells in

honkyoku music is that Weisgarber fails to look at the inner structure of those patterns and their

structural role within phrases (1994: 99-100). For Gutzwiller, the inner structure of phrases can

be understood through scales (i.e., modes) upon which these pieces were composed. Besides

referring to “notes” and “scales,” he also uses of other terms from European music, such as

tonality, modulation, dominant, subdominant, terms that are not part of the original vocabulary of

this music. Yet, toward the end of his dissertation, somewhat contradicting himself, Gutzwiller

quotes Weisgarber: “the entire body of Kinko honkyoku seems […] to be a vast, single

18
composition wherein the constant recurrence of significant patterns, always place in new

circumstances, creates startling points of reference, always establishing a strong sense of

unity” (Weisgarber 1968: 332) (cited, 1974: 137). The term patterns in this quote could be

replaced by what he calls phrase-material, a term that could possibly be defined as patterns in the

sense proposed by Weisgarber.

Riley Lee, in his 1992 PhD dissertation, talks as well of the importance of phrases in

honkyoku music similarly to Gutzwiller, directing some critics at Weisgarber (1968) and

Stanfield (1977). For Lee, European classical music terms like tonic, dominant, time signatures,

bar lines, beats, and others, do not apply to honkyoku music; he even qualifies them as

meaningless, since they can not be applied to this music as European classical music defines

these terms. Moreover, he indicates that Weisgarber does not say anything about breathing and

silences between phrases. For Lee, he is inconsistent in presenting his notions of patterns or cells.

He lists numerous patterns, yet he ignores parts of phrases that he does not list as patterns,

including being as well inconsistent in the labelling of these patterns, that Lee prefers to call

segments of phrases. According to Lee, Weisgarber does not analyze the role of these patterns in

the overall structure of the pieces themselves.

Another shakuhachi player who scrutinizes the question of phrases and patterns in

honkyoku music in a more recent dissertation is Gunner Linder (2012), basing his analysis on

two well-known Japanese musicologists and historians of music, Kikkawa Eishi and Tsukitani

Tsuneko, though he says nothing of Gutzwiller’s, Lee’s, Weisgarber’s and Stanfield’s works.

Developing Kikkawa and Tsukitani’s work, Linder distinguishes between sound phrases and

sound patterns within phrases, in line with Weisgarber’s. The phrase is also for Linder the basic

19
meaningful musical unit of honkyoku pieces, consisting of one or more sound patterns. He adds

to this what he calls sound idioms, i.e., idioms of expressiveness (e.g., ornaments or

articulations) that are usually not indicated on the score, or when indicated, they are not always

played exactly as written down, as Stanfield indicates about articulation. These idioms are

applied to tones or patterns, playing an as important role as tones themselves (Linder, 2012: 271

ff.).20

Melodies, such as the one found in shamisen music or in gagaku court music, for example,

are based on modes,21 but it is not definite that it is specifically the case with honkyoku music,

although authors such Gutzwiller and Stanfield, for example, are analyzing them from that

viewpoint.22 When hearing a honkyoku piece, with clearly bounded phrases, on the one hand, as

already suggested, the impose breathing and silences between phrases disrupt any melodic flow

that the listener might be expecting, which could make it hard to make sense of a melody from

the perspective of a particular mode. On the other hand, at times, a phrase clashes with the ones

that precedes it, purposefully breaking the flow of the melody. As the term is usually defined, a

melody usually implies a structural and thus modal or tonal continuity, as is the case with

shamisen music, for example, and most other melodic musics. This is not the case in these solo

pieces for the shakuhachi. Numerous phrases appear to be “closed” on themselves, and do not

have much to do with the one preceding or following it.

20 In his dissertation, Gunnar Linder presents the work of these two Japanese researchers at length, a presentation
that is beyond the scope of this paper.
21 McQueen Tokita (1996, 1999, 2000) and Tokumaru (2000) for shamisen, Tamba (1988) for gagaku.
22 Akira Tamba (1988) clearly shows that it is the case with gagaku court music. Yet, in an earlier book, Tamba
(1974) shows that an analysis of the music of nō theatre in term of modes does not apply. The structure of the music
of that theatre is based more on patterns constrained, so to speak, by the interval of fourth, which appears to be the
case with honkyoku music, in line with Koizumi’s notion of tetrachord (see Bruno Deschênes 2017).

20
 I would like to suggest that we find two main types of phrases in honkyoku pieces, though

there are, of course, others. First, some phrases could be qualified as “complete” by themselves,

for lack of a better term, having a cadence, in the sense that Stanfield defines the term, which

does not expressly link it to the phrase that follows it, at times with the one that precedes it. Even

when it is linked with the phrase that follows and/or precedes, it can reappear later in the piece

alongside different phrases. These phrases somehow can be linked to other phrases without being

dependent on them, thus appearing somewhat randomly in a piece. On the other hand, some

phrases do not have a clear cadence, which is the case in particular with phrases with a single

tone, for example, but not exclusively. These phrases are dependent on the ones that precede it

and/or follow it. Their cadence is not clear, sometimes giving the impression that such phrase is

part of a larger one, or need other phrases to “make sense” in the musical context of the piece.

Groupings

In his dissertation, Stanfield talks about sentences, which I prefer to call grouping. He

situates them, on the one hand, within the overall structures of a piece. These sentences,

composed of two or more phrases, becomes for him some kind of “themes” that distinguish a

piece. Stanfield also gives diagrammatic and comparative formal and contour structural analyses

of three pieces about phrases and sentences.23 Is it the case, knowing, as mentioned earlier, that

the melodic line of these pieces has no clear continuity, being broken by obligatory silences, and

that these melodic lines have not much to do with how we define a melody in the West? Few

pieces have a defined melodic line (e.g., the pieces Azuma jishi or Tamuke), while most of them

23 He also talks about double bar lines found in some repertoires without clearly explaining what he means by that.

21
do not have what should be called a melodic line. At times, the melodies sound like a patchwork

of phrases brought together. A group of phrases may appear few times in a piece, but the way

these phrases are organized and how the piece is structured, does not allow us to call it a theme.

When listening to these pieces, the neophyte will not hear these repeated groups of phrases as a

theme. I would even suggest that shakuhachi players either, both Japanese and non-Japanese, do

not, the reason being that these melodies have not been composed from the viewpoint of a

recurrent theme as found in classical music or a pop or folk song, for example.

Although Stanfield analyzes the architectonic structures, i.e., the form, of few honkyoku

pieces about phrases and sentences, he concludes that they are “lost” in the “maze of melodic

detail, with no inherent relationships to each other” (Stanfield, 1977: 160-162). In other words,

he does not see any direct link between the melodic character, the articulation with the patterns,

the phrases and the sentences. So his suggestion of finding themes in a piece does not hold. Two

of the reasons are, first, each phrase is somewhat independent from one another, although they

can be grouped to form larger phrases. And second, the articulation, the “forms of blowing” and

the “forms of thinking,” to use these two expressions from Gutzwiller, cannot be written down

on the score. What is written and what is performed are never exactly the same, since how the

musician gives forms and thinks the phrases and the piece through her or his use of articulations,

as well as how musically he makes the silences between phrases, can greatly differ from one

musician to another, even musicians from the same school. As already mentioned, these scores

are only guides for performance; they do not define how a piece is performed. A shakuhachi

player does not simply play one phrase after another, intersperse by silences. It can be suggested

that in honkyoku pieces a phrase comes out of silence to go back to it. Except when indicated in a

22
score, or within a particular style, either the style of school or a musician, a phrase in the

traditional styles usually is not attacked and does not end abruptly. The silence before to start

prepares the first phrase to emerge, gradually returning to silence when completed. That silence

brings about the second phrase to return to silence afterwards in the same manner, and so on. If I

understand Gutzwiller’s “forms of blowing,” the breath the player takes is not solely to take air

to play the phrase. There must be a balance between the silence, the state of mind of the player

when breathing, the first tone starting a phrase, including a balance between the last tone and the

silence to come, in the form of a crescendo and decrescendo. The silences are as important as the

tones to come since they give them “life” by bringing them out of some “void.”

Some pieces have clearly defined groups of phrases, while in others, especially lengthy

pieces (some could last more than 20 minutes), these groups might not be as clearly defined.

Based on the character and style of the piece as well as a personal style of playing, a musician

might groups phrases differently from other musicians. The music lover who knows very well

this type of music might be able to discern groupings in this sometimes austere music, while one

who hear that music for the first time or rarely might not. The unusual melodic structure of the

pieces can make it difficult to recognize groups of phrases. Although grouping is structural and

can be analyzed as shown below, it is largely dependent on performance, being relative to the

style of the piece and/or the style of the musician or the school to make them aesthetically and

musically discernable. Some shakuhachi players might not even group phrases distinctively as

proposed here, though a piece might have been written in that way. Yet, some pieces are

structured around groups of phrases that the musician has no choice but to emphasize in her

playing, as the second example below shows.

23
 Here are four examples of pieces, one excerpt followed by three full pieces, which show

how phrases may be grouped in the solo pieces of the honkyoku repertoires. In this preliminary

presentation, I do not analyze these pieces in detail, my focus being to give examples of

groupings of phrases in that particular music in the hope to show their importance.

Few things need to be mentioned beforehand. The transcriptions of each of these examples

are not detailed. The traditional shakuhachi notation allows musicians to play any piece with a

shakuhachi of the length he wishes.24 The more traditional pieces may be played using the

traditional fingering used by the monks of the Fuke sect during the Edo period, or the modern

fingering that allows to be more in tune with the Western tempered scale. However, most of the

pieces composed in the 20th century are played using the modern fingering.25 Usually, though,

when a piece is played using the traditional fingering, the question of being in tune according to

a scale or a mode is secondary. Also, in the traditional score, the duration of the tones are

relative, not precise. So the duration of the notes in the transcription is not representative of how

they played. It may change from one musician to another, and even from one performance to

another from the same musician. Usually, both the duration of the tones and the duration of the

breathing and silences are up to the musician when performing. In the Japanese scores below, the

small horizontal lines separate each phrase as well as indicating obligatory breathing and

24 The name shakuhachi means 1 shaku 8 relatively to the length of the flute. This flute can be between 1 shaku up
to 4 shaku. A musician might play a piece with a shakuhachi, the length of which is 2.0, while another might use a
longer 2.3 or 2.4 flute. There are no fixed rules to determine which length of flute should be used to play a piece. It
is up to the musician.
25 The scale played with the regular holes is D, F, G, A and C. The traditional fingering uses movements of the head
and lips to play the tones in between, while the modern fingering uses partially opened holes, which allows to get
tones more in tune with a mode, including the Western tempered scale, though it is near to impossible to be perfectly
in tune with that scale.

24
silences. In the Western transcriptions, the short vertical barlines represent these horizontal

breath marks.

The first example presents the first four phrases of the piece Daiwa gaku (The Great Peace)

from the 20th-century Japanese shakuhachi master Nyōdo Jin (1892-1965). This short excerpt

gives an example of two phrases, each with a single tone, followed by a third phrase that is an

“echo,” so to speak, of the first two phrases (figure 2). When performing these three phrases, the

musician cannot simply play them one behind the other one mechanically. These three short

phrases are clearly linked, thus forming a larger phrase. A shakuhachi player could easily play

them in one breath, but it is not what Nyōdo Jin had in mind when he composed it. He wanted to

emphasize the first two tones by having them perform as two distinct phrases, the third one could

be viewed as an echo of these two tones. Since this group of three phrases forms a larger one, the

fourth phrase cannot be played right after the third one. There should be a longer pause between

phrases 3 and 4 than between phrases 1-2 and 2-3.

25
Figure 2. The first four phrases of Daiwa gaku, a piece composed by Japanese master Nyōdo Jin

(1891-1966). Score by Kurahashi Yōdō I (1909-1980). Used by permission, Kurahashi Yōdō II.26

The second example possibly qualifies as the best example in all the repertoires of solo

pieces for the shakuhachi of the grouping of phrases. The piece is Kyorei (Empty Bell) (figure 3).

It is among the oldest known pieces of the honkyoku repertoire (around 400 to 450 years old). In

this piece, a recurrent melodic pattern extends over few phrases, thus being entirely dependent on

groupings, instead of being constrained within a single phrase. The circled numbers above each

line in the original score (reproduced in the transcription) indicate that these numbers refer to

repeated groups of phrases.

We can notice in lines numbered 1, 2 and 3 the same pattern with the same tones, except

that these tones are combined differently in each of the phrases.27 In lines 1 and 2, the pattern is

not found within a phrase but is spread over three phrases in line 1, and two phrases in line 2.

Only the first phrase of line 3 gives the full pattern in a single phrase. The last phrase of these

three groups of phrases is the same. These groups reappear later in lines 7 to 9 (numbered 1, 2

and 3 on the original score), with a variation: the last phrase of each of these three lines is

different from their first occurrence. We can also notice that, similarly to the previous example,

the first phrase of lines 1 and 2 (as well as 7 and 8) have a single tone. The melodic pattern,

which spreads over three phrases in line 1 and then two phrases in line 2, can only be grasped

26In my 2017 article, “A Preliminary Approach to the Analysis of Honkyoku, The Solo Repertoire of the Japanese
Shakuhachi” (NEMO-Online, 4(6):123-145), I analyze the grouping of phrases of the full piece.
27 Japanese honkyoku scores read from right to left, top to down.

26
after hearing them all. Or, more specifically, the musician must perform this group of phrases to

bring about the entire pattern in line 3, the first two lines leading toward the third one.

As for the other groups of phrases in the piece, we find the following. The fifth line repeats

exactly line 2; the fourth and the sixth lines are the same, creating a contrast with what precedes

and what follows them; the tenth and eleventh lines (numbered 5 and 6), are distinct from

everything else; while the 12th line is a variation of line 2 with a different ending. The 10th and

the 11th lines form a single group since both lines revolved around tones not found in the other

groups of phrases, line 11 being clearly a follow-up of line 10.

In this piece, we see a pattern that spreads over groups of phrases. It can even be suggested

that lines 1-3 and 7-9 form groups of groups.

27
 Figure 3. Kyorei, score by Kurahashi Yōdō II. Used by permission.28 


Each staff of the transcription in Western notation refers to each vertical group of phrases.

The third example shows a piece with two groupings of more than two phrases that are

repeated with some variations. Figure 4 shows the entire score and transcription of Fudaiji Kokū

(from the Fudaiji temple, situated about halfway between Tokyo and Kyoto), which is divided

into five parts.29 Interestingly, the first group of phrases appear in parts 1 to 3, while the second

group appears in parts 3-5. This piece has to be played using the traditional fingering. The last

occurrence of the first group is followed immediately by the first occurrence of the second

group.30 The first group has five phrases, appearing five times, but with a variation in

occurrences 2, 4 and 5. Occurrences 1, 3 and 5 with a red line are numbered 1 (as well as in the

transcription); occurrences 2 and 4 with a green line are numbered 2. The last phrase in

occurrences 2 and 4 is expanded. Occurrences 1 and 3 are the same, as well as 2 and 4. As for the

5th occurrence, the last phrase of the 1st occurrence is missing. There is also another slight

variation in occurrence 1 compared to occurrences 3 and 5. The second phrase in the 1st

occurrence is longer than in occurrences 3 and 5, something that the musician must make clear

when performing this piece.

As for the second major group of phrases that appear three times, indicated by the purple

lines on the original score and by the brackets numbered 3 in the transcription, it also has five

28The score in figure 3 shows the original version of that piece. At some point, a monk added another part.
According to Kurahahi Yōdō II, nobody knows who did it and when. I show here only the original piece.

29 The parts are indicated as follow on the original score: .

30 There are other smaller groups. For this presentation, I focussed solely on these two large groups.

28
phrases, while being much longer, making use intensively of vibratos. Here too, there is a slight

variation between the first occurrence and the two others. The first phrase of the first occurrence

differs from the two other ones. With this group too, the musician has to link them together

musically as a group in itself, by taking longer silences before and after, and shorter ones

between the phrases of the group.

29
30
 Figure 4. Fudaiji Kokū. Score by Kurahashi Yōdo II. 


Used by permission.

The fourth and last piece I would like to present is a piece from the beginning of the 20th

century called Ajikan (Seeing with the heart), arranged by Myagawa Nyozan. What is interesting

about this piece is that each occurrence of the three groups of phrases I show are repeated with

variations in a phrase within the group. The first group of phrases (red lines in the original score,

numbered 1 both in the score and the transcription) comprises two phrases and appears four

times in the piece. The second phrase of the second occurrence differs from its first occurrence.

31
In the third occurrence the first phrase is different, while the second phrase is the same as the

second occurrence. As for the fourth occurrence of that group, it is the same as the third one.

The second group (purple lines, numbered 2) comprises three phrases. This group is an

extension of the first group but in the lower octave instead of the higher one. The first phrase of

this group starts the same as the first phrase of the first group but ends differently, though the

second phrase is almost the same as the second one of the first group. The third phrase combines

into a single phrase both phrases of the first group in the lower octave. We can notice a

difference in the first phrase of the group between the two occurrences. Both, in group 1 (red

line) and group 2 (green line), there is a vibrato in the first phrase of the first occurrence that is

absent in the second occurrence.

The third group (green lines, numbered 3) also comprises three phrases. While the first and

third phrases are the same, the second phrase in the second occurrence differs from the first one.

32
 Figure 5. Ajikan by Myagawa Nyozan. Score by Kurahashi Yōdō II. 


Used by permission.

Gutzwiller’s views that the phrase is the primary unit of honkyoku pieces, and Weisgarber’s

and Stanford’s analysis that these pieces and their phrases are constructed on predefine patterns

are most pertinent, raise some of the most explicit specificities of the musical character of the

33
honkyoku repertoires, either traditional or modern. They, however, ignore one other crucial

aspect: grouping of phrases, that Stanfield talks about, calling them sentences. He appears to

view his sentences in the context of the entire pieces, not as structural aspects from which a piece

is created. As mentioned, each phrase is separated from the previous and the following ones by

obligatory breathing indicated in the scores. The shakuhachi player does not simply play each

phrase one after another, loosely breathing between them, she ou he must link them together in a

musical and aesthetic flow, even though these silences separate them. When groups of phrases

are repeated, they often do not remain the same at every occurrence.

I did not discuss two aspects of grouping here: a phrase within a group may appear

somewhere else in the piece (or another piece), grouped with different phrases, or alone. Or, a

phrase may appear in a group and disappear in an occurrence. There does not seem to be any

clearly defined rules about groupings; sometimes, grouping appears to be random. This seems to

indicate that these pieces were not always composed based on some structural rules, though in

some schools, there are such rules. For example, Kurahashi Yōdō II told me that the repertoire of

honkyoku pieces from the Futaiken temple, north of Tokyo, have been usually composed in four

parts, the second part being subdivided in two, the second subdivision is usually (but not always)

in the high register.

Also, these silences are not simply silences, breaks in the flow of the melody, or absence of

sound, they are an integral part of the aesthetic of this music that the musician must convey in

her or his playing. These phrases are not independent of each other, randomly brought together to

create a piece. In performance, the aesthetic quality of any piece is not found in the phrases as

such, their overall melodic structure, the patterns upon which they are constructed, but in how

34
the shakuhachi player brings them musically together in the musical flow of a piece when

performing. This implies grouping together to create larger sentences, to use this term from

Stanfield. The breathing and silences between phrases must be done accordingly, i.e., a long

silence between groups and a short one within the group, though it is up to the musician to group

them, as well as determining the duration of these silences.

Conclusion

Although honkyoku melodies do not have much in common with the melodies of kabuki or

bunraku (puppet) theatres, or any kind of melodies, as the term is defined in Western musicology,

and although the flow of the melody is broken by obligatory breathing and silences, there must

still be a musical flow in the playing, a flow in which the grouping of phrases surely play a

crucial role. There can be phrases within pieces that are not grouped with other phrases. Some

phrases can be repeated here and there without any clear link with other phrases whatsoever. In

this sense, a piece does not comprise tones, patterns, phrases, or groupings, but an amalgamation

of theses. I do not believe we should give primacy to one over the others since they all play a

crucial role in the flow of a piece when performed.

One critic I may make about Gutzwiller, Weisgarber and Stanford analyses is that they

have been made largely from the viewpoint of Western musicology, to which I, of course, include

my presentation of groupings. In very general terms, Western musicology views a score as an

object to be analyzed, decrypted, deciphered distinctively from its performance, as if what is in

the score is the representation of the musical work, independently from its performance. A first

problem in doing such analysis is that there exists no “universal” notation for the shakuhachi.

35
There are, in fact, many, though they are based on common signs and symbols. Some are

detailed, though not to the extent of Western notation, while others can be sketchy or

rudimentary, presenting a bare minimum. A lot about a style of playing is not indicated in a

score. These scores are guides for performance, not an object distinct from it that exists on its

own. For this reason, we cannot take the analysis of the authors, including mine, of course, at

face value, although valuable they might be in understanding this unique music. A second

problem is that most pieces of the honkyoku repertoire have several versions (a few pieces have

up to 20 or more versions). Moreover, the title of a piece in a school might have a different one

in another school. Even, when a shakuhachi master create his school, it is quite common for

him31 to rework pieces according to a style of playing he has created.

In the end, although, as shown here, phrases, patterns and the grouping of phrases can be

analyzed, their roles and meanings are primarily for the benefit of performance, not for the

analysis of the structure of a piece as a distinct “object.” If the shakuhachi player makes an

assessment of a piece, that is, a partial and personal analysis of a piece, it is for the requisite of

her or his performance. A musician might even group phrases differently from other musicians,

or his grouping might change over the years. As shown above, in such pieces as Kyorei, Fudaiji

Kokū or Ajikani we find clearly defined groups of phrases. In some pieces, it is not the case. It is

up to the musician to define them. A question is worth raising in the following: did these monks

or the 20th-century musicians and composers compose their pieces with grouping in mind? We

might never know.

31As far as I know, there are no schools of shakuhachi that a woman shakuhachi player has founded. Only recently,
probably the last 30 to 40 years or so, can we regularly hear of women shakuhachi players. Up until recently, the
shakuhachi was almost exclusively the purview of men.

36
References

Bellando, Nick and Bruno Deschênes (2020). “The Role of Tone-colour in Japanese Shakuhachi

Music,” Ethnomusicological Review 22(1):43-60.

Deschênes, Bruno (2017). “A Preliminary Approach to the Analysis of Honkyoku, The Solo

Repertoire of the Japanese Shakuhachi,” NEMO-Online, 4(6):123-145.

Gutzwiller, Andreas B. (1974). Shakuhachi: Aspects of History, Practice and Teaching.

Dissertation, Wesleyan University. Ann Arbour, Michigan: University Microfilm.

Gutzwiller, Andreas and Bennett, Gerald (1991). “The world of a single sound: basic structure of

the music of the Japanese flute shakuhachi,” Musica Asiatica, 6:36-60

Hahn, Tomie (2007) Sensational Knowledge, Embodying Culture Through Japanese Dance,
Middleton, Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press.
Johnson, Henry (2014). The Shakuhachi, Roots and Route. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

Kikkawa Eishi (1980). Nihon ongaku no seikaku 日本音楽の性格 (The Character of Japanese

Music). Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha.

——— (1984). Nihon ongaku no biteki kenkyū 日本音楽の美的研究 (Aesthetic Research in

Japanese Music), Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha.

——— (1990). Nihon ongaku no rekishi 日本音楽の歴史 (The History of Japanese Music).

Osaka: Zōgensha.

Koizumi, Fumio (1979). “Scales in Japanese Music.” In Asian Music in an Asian Perspective,

edited by F. Koizumi, Y. Tokumaru, and O. Yamaguchi, 73-9. Tokyo: Heibunsha.

Lee, Riley (1992). Yearning for the Bell, A Study of Transmission in the Shakuhachi Honkyoku
Tradition. Dissertation, University of Sydney.
Linder, Gunnar (2012). Deconstructing Tradition in Japanese Music – A Study of Shakuhachi,

Historical Authenticity and Transmission of Tradition. Dissertation. Stockholm:

Department of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University.

37
Malm, William P. (1959/2000), Traditional Japanese Music and Musical Instruments, Tokyo/

New York/London, Kodansha International.

McQueen Tokita, Alison (1996). “Mode and Scale, Modulation and Tuning in Japanese

Shamisen Music: The Case of Kiyomoto Narrative.” Ethnomusicology, 40(1): 1-33.

McQueen Tokita, Alison (1999). Kiyomoto-bushi, Narrative music of the Kabuki theatre. Basel/

London: Bärenreiter Kassel.

McQueen Tokita, Alison (2000). “The Nature of patterning in Japanese narrative music:

Formulaic musical material in Heikyoku, Gidayū-bushi, and Kiyomoto-bushi.” Musicology

Australia, 23(1): 99-122.

Sanford, James H., “The Fukeshu and Komuso,” in Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 32, No. 4,

Winter, 1977, p. 411-440.

Stanfield, Norman Allen (1977). The “San Koten Honkyoku” of the Kinko-Ryu: A Study of

Traditional Solo Music for the Japanese Vertical End-Blown Flute— The Shakuhachi.

Thesis. University of British Columbia, Canada.

Tamba, Akira (1974). La structure musicale du nô : théâtre traditionnel japonais, Paris:

Klincksieck.

Tamba, Akira (1988). La théorie et l’esthétique musicale japonaises du 8e au 19e siècles, Paris:

Publications Orientalistes de France.

Tokumaru, Yoshihiko (1991). “Le timbre dans la musique japonaise.” In Le timbre, Métaphore

pour la composition, edited by Jean-Baptiste Barrière, 90– 97. Paris: Ircam-Centre

Pompidou/Christian Bourgeois Éditions.

—— (2000). L’aspect mélodique de la musique de syamisen. Paris: Éditions Peeters.

Tsukitani, Tsuneko (2000). Shakuhachi koten honkyoku no kenkyū 尺八古典本 曲の研究 (A

Study of Classical (koten) Fundamental Pieces (honkyoku) for Shakuhachi). Tokyo:

Shuppan Geijutsu-sha.

—— (1989). “Shakuhachi: Bungakuteki imēji no Shinpuku” 尺八 − 文学的イメージの振幅

(Shakuhachi: The Amplitude of its Literary Image). Kokubungaku Kaishaku to Kanshō 54,

38
 no. 8 国文学解釈と鑑賞 (National Literature: Interpretation and Appreciation. Shibundo,

114–116.

Weisgarber, Elliott (1968). “The honkyoku of the kinko-ryū: some principles of its organization,”
Ethnomusicology 12 (3): 313-344.

39