Hi Duke,
I'm sorry, I did misread your question. If anecdotal evidence is
anything to go on, the three Japanese professional or semi-professional
Kinko shakuhachi players whom I have had the good fortune to learn from and
who are of Sakai Chikuho II's generation (he was born in 1933), that is,
players now in their 60s or 70s, made or are still making shakuhachi for
many of their students ( Fuji Jido, Suzuki Shodo, Yokoyama Katsuya), so it
would seem likely that Sakai Chikuho II probably made his own flutes as
other shakuhachi kai leaders of his time often did (though I could be
wrong.....) In contrast, the five or six Japanese players in their forties
or fifties whom I'm acquainted with who make a living playing the
shakuhachi are not shakuhachi makers, though some of them may have made a
few flutes over the years. My own teacher, Ikezoe Kyodo, a deshi of Fuji
Jido, is in his early fifties and has never made a shakuhachi. His flutes
are made by the above mentioned Suzuki Shodo, the leader of Shodo kai, a
group which joined with Fuji Jido's group to make a new branch of Kinko
ryu, the Chikudosha, in the 1980's. My own flute maker is a professional
maker, as opposed to being a professional player, residing in Kyoto. To
quote from Riley Lee's dissertation, in a passage concerning ji nashi
shakuhachi, "such instruments were common before the advent of the
professional shakuhachi maker, that is, before this century (from Yearning
From the Bell: A Study of Transmission of the Shakuhachi Honkyoku
Tradition, p. 275 -- an excellent source on shakuhachi, I might add, and
probably the best work available on shakuhachi and honkyoku in the English
language), so that may at least answer your first question....the shift to
separation between makers and players began in the twentieth century, and I
imagine started becoming more well defined after the end of World War II
with the rise of consumer culture in Japan....tracing that separation would
probably make a good topic for someone's research paper... Yes, I noticed
that the crack was quite prominent in that flute advertised on Ebay...I
think it was written in the description of the instrument that the flute
may not be playable, or something to that effect...definitely not.... a
major repair job. But if it was really a flute made by Chikuo I or Chikuho
II then maybe it would be something of a collector's item....
Cheers,
Dan
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