I advocate playing honkyoku without yuri because I believe strongly in
doing as my teacher tells me, at least for a very long time, like ten
years or so. I should add that all of my teachers have themselves spent
decades playing the shakuhachi.
I've studied two things extensively that come from the "Eastern" (a
better word than Oriental, but not much IMHO) tradition, namely Daoist
philosophy and shakuhachi. While pursuing studies in the former I often
engaged my teacher in debate, as he would often go off on rants about
things that to me seemed only tangentally related to the text; then one
day my dear friend and fellow student Ken advised me that I would do
better putting that aside and just following, so to speak, everything
our teacher taught us, as that way, and only that way, could I fully
benefit from what he had to offer. I could then change my mind about it
later if I wanted to.
I feel the same way about shakuhachi. I studied with one teacher for
three years, then was without a teacher for a number of years, during
which time I had lessons with various teachers, and now study a
different style with different teachers. As a result I've heard "do it
this way, not that way," then later "no, do it that way, not this way"
many times. There's no way I would tell any of those teachers, during
the lesson, "sorry, but I'm not going to play it as you say, because X
sensei told me differently," so why should I do the same thing ten
minutes after the lesson because I personally don't agree? That's
simply dishonest.
Therefore, with something like yuri, where all my teachers have been in
agreement, I would hesitate to make that change without an incredibly
compelling reason to do so. Moreover, behind these teachers lies the
tradition, and while there's no way to know for sure how the Komoso or
Komuso played, I choose to respect that tradition as it's been handed
down to me.
In Japan there's is great respect for the sensei, which after all means
literally "born before me," and while that unquestioning attitude is no
doubt often carried to far, wetend to err in the opposite extreme. In
my experience, the vast majority of Euro-American players, especially
American, who have not spent much time in Japan, do not have proper
respect for this side of shakuhachi. The attitude seems to be so show
great respect on the outside, but it appears the real desire is to
learn a little technique, then branch off and do one's own thing and/or
hang a shingle and become a microwaved sensei. That may be all good and
well, but again I feel it shows a lack of faith in the tradition, which
is a kind of egotism--a "we're America, we're 10 and 1" (now 12 and 1 I
guess) egotism if not a personal egotism (British version: "See all
those pink countires? They're ours; they belong to us").
Granted, players like Watazumi or Yokoyama were innovative, to the
extent that we students of Yokoyama are for the most part stuck under
his shadow, but they kept within their tradition to a great extent, and
while Japanese players may seem exasperatingly content to stay there,
we Western players are guilty of going to the other extreme.
Well, now that I've probably pissed off most of y'all I'll keep quiet.
One last caveat, though--I notice that my bringing up concrete
questions about the actual playing of shakuhachi usually morphs quickly
into discussions of esoterica (to which I end up responding in
kind...); the best example is how the question I posed months ago about
the importance of technique in suizen devolved (from my p.o.v.) into an
argument about how to tell how much Buddha nature someone has. The
ironic thing is that for me shakuhachi has been a wonderful antidote to
my over-intellectualizing things.
PH
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