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A shakuhachi is a Japanese longitudinal, end-blown flute that is made of bamboo. The bamboo end-blown flute now known as the shakuhachi was developed in Japan in the 16th century and is called the fuke shakuhachi (普化尺八). A bamboo flute known as the kodai shakuhachi or gagaku shakuhachi (雅楽尺八) was derived from the Chinese xiao in the Nara period and died out in the 10th century. After a long blank period, the hitoyogiri shakuhachi (一節切尺八) appeared in the 15th century, and then in the 16th century, the fuke shakuhachi was developed in Japan. The fuke shakuhachi flourished in the 18th century during the Edo period, and eventually the hitoyogiri shakuhachi also died out. The fuke shakuhachi developed in Japan is longer and thicker than the kodai shakuhachi and has one finger hole less. It is longer and thicker than hitoyogiri shakuhachi and is superior in volume, range, scale and tone quality. Today, since the shakuhachi generally refers only to fuke shakuhachi, the theory that the shakuhachi is an instrument unique to Japan is widely accepted.
Atsuya Okuda is a Japanese-born master player and teacher jinashi shakuhachi, an unrefined bamboo flute. Prior to dedicating his efforts to the bamboo flute, he was a professional jazz trumpet player from approximately 1965 until 1985.
Toshi Ichiyanagi was a Japanese avant-garde composer and pianist. One of the leading composers in Japan during the postwar era, Ichiyanagi worked in a range of genres, composing Western-style operas and orchestral and chamber works, as well as compositions using traditional Japanese instruments. Ichiyanagi is known for incorporating avant-garde techniques into his works, such as chance music, extended technique, and nontraditional scoring. Ichiyanagi was married to artist Yoko Ono from 1956 to 1962.
John Kaizan Neptune is an American player and builder of the shakuhachi. He is known particularly for his use of the instrument in non-traditional contexts, such as jazz and cross-cultural music.
Hiroshima is an American band formed in 1974 that incorporates Japanese instruments in its music. Hiroshima has sold over four million albums around the world.
Gorō Yamaguchi was a Japanese shakuhachi player who worked in both solo and ensemble performances. He was noted for his influential recordings of Traditional Japanese music and one of his pieces was selected by NASA to be included on the Voyager Golden Record and launched into space.
Hōzan Yamamoto was a Japanese shakuhachi player, composer and lecturer.
Richard Marriott is an American composer and performer. He has composed for film, television, dance, theater, opera, installations and video games. He is the founder and artistic director of the Club Foot Orchestra, an important modern ensemble for live music performance with silent films. His teachers include Dominick Argento and Paul Fetler at the University of Minnesota, Pauline Oliveros at UCSD, North Indian sarod master Ali Akbar Khan, shakuhachi master Masayuki Koga, and Balinese composers Nyoman Windha and Made Subandi. Marriott was a member of Snakefinger's History of the Blues and has recorded with The Residents, Brazilian Girls, "Singer at Large" Johnny J. Blair, and many others. He performs on brass and woodwind instruments, Western and Asian.
Masakazu Yoshizawa was a Japanese American flutist and musician, known for his mastery of the bamboo flute, specifically the shakuhachi. Yoshizawa also mastered several other traditional Japanese flutes, in addition to other Japanese and Western musical instruments. He was also considered a scholar of ancient and modern Japanese traditional music. Yoshizawa's work and music were featured in a number of major Hollywood studio films and soundtracks, including The Joy Luck Club and Memoirs of a Geisha.
Riley Kelly Lee is an American-born Australian-based shakuhachi player and teacher. In 1980 he became the first non-Japanese person to attain the rank of Dai Shihan in the shakuhachi tradition. He is a recipient of two of the most revered lineages of shakuhachi playing, descending from the original Zen Buddhist "priests of nothingness" of the Edo period. His first teachers were Hoshida Ichizan II and Chikuho Sakai II. A later teacher was Katsuya Yokoyama.
Masao Koga was a Japanese composer, mandolinist, and guitarist of the Shōwa era who was dubbed "Japan's Irving Berlin" by Universal Press Syndicate. His melancholy style, based upon Nakayama Shimpei's yonanuki scale, was popularly known in Japan as "Koga melody". He was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure and the People's Honor Award for his contributions to Japanese music.
Kenny Endo is an American musician and taiko master. He is the leader of several taiko ensembles and regularly tours, performing traditional and contemporary taiko music. Endo is also the first non-Japanese national to receive a natori in the field of hogaku hayashi, Japanese classical drumming. Today Endo composes his own music and plays taiko professionally as a solo artist, with his ensembles, and in collaboration with other artists.
James Nyoraku Schlefer, born 1956 in Brooklyn, New York, is a performer and teacher and composer of shakuhachi in New York City. He received the Dai-Shi-Han certificate in 2001, one of only a handful of non-Japanese to receive this high-level award. In 2008, he received his second Shi-Han certificate from Mujuan Dojo, in Kyoto. In Japan, Schlefer has worked with Reibo Aoki, Katsuya Yokoyama, Yoshio Kurahashi, Yoshinobu Taniguchi, and Kifu Mitsuhashi. His first teacher was Ronnie Nyogetsu Seldin. He holds a master's degree in Western flute and musicology from Queens College and currently teaches shakuhachi class at Columbia University and music history courses at the City University of New York. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Tanglewood, BAM, the Metropolitan Museum, at colleges and universities throughout the US and has toured in Japan, Indonesia, Brazil and counties in Europe. Schlefer has four solo recordings, Wind Heart(which travelled 120,000,000 miles aboard the Space Station MIR) Solstice Spirit (1998), Flare Up (2002), and In The Moment (2008). His music has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered. Schlefer's latest recording Spring Sounds, Spring Seas was released in June 2012 and features his original music for shakuhachi and orchestra.
Junko (Yanai) Mori is a Japanese composer and music educator.
Sacred Journey of Ku-Kai is a series of peace-themed albums by new age artist Kitarō, inspired by the classic Buddhist pilgrimage to the 88 sacred temples on Japan's island of Shikoku. Each album in the series has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album.
Koga, Kōga, Kouga or Kohga is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Minoru Muraoka was a Japanese shakuhachi player. He became well-known for using the shakuhachi to play jazz music, which was influential on popularizing the instrument in contemporary Japanese music.
Rinzō Nakao, was the founder of the most important school of shakuhachi playing in late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth-century Japan and was both a performer and prolific composer. His influence continues to the present day.
Nin x Nin: Ninja Hattori-kun, the Movie is a 2004 Japanese action adventure film based on the manga series Ninja Hattori-kun by Fujiko Fujio.The film is directed by Masayuki Suzuki and stars Shingo Katori as Kanzo Hattori. The official English title of the movie is Nin x Nin: The Ninja Star Hattori.
