I did mention in my earlier message "concerning iemotos" that one can
expect high fees if one is a member of an iemoto and also noted that some
of the money one pays for passing the various levels goes up to the top of
the pyramid. Our group has an annual membership fee as well, though it is
only about half of what Tozan charges. As Tom mentioned, Tozan is the
biggest pyramid of all ... with the Kinko groups being smaller pyramids. I
like the idea of the Kinko iemotos that anyone can start up one's own
iemoto if one so desires, but of course it takes a lot of work, rewriting
all the pieces, and then getting sponsors, supporters, people who will join
or recognize your iemoto. I just learned from my sensei last week that the
head of our iemoto, Fuji sensei, has recently rewritten all the gaikyoku
pieces as well as the honkyoku -- that is a lot of work! -- so in the
future I assume we won't be reliant on the Domon Kai notation for gaikyoku
pieces. It's also a lot of work for the students if one has to learn
different versions of the pieces one learned before; I started learning the
Domon Kai version of various honkyoku and got very used to those but now am
starting to learn Fuji sensei's adaptations. It seems that the Kinko
schools allow more freedom in interpretation of the music in this way, with
a number of different iemotos which all seem to be on fairly friendly
terms. Tozan seems to be more of a monolithic kingdom, with
excommunication the punishment meted out to individuals or groups who try
to make changes in the music -- I don't believe that one can any longer use
the name Tozan after one has tried to make changes -- and as Tom noted, it
would be very interesting to know more about the inner workings of that
shakuhachi empire.
Cheers,
Dan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 08 2002 - 09:19:35 PST