Kaji Makura

On our first Sunday in Tokyo I had a Shakuhachi lesson with Christopher.    Since my last lesson back in May I've been working on a piece called 'Kaji Makura'.  I'd found this piece quite difficult as it introduces some new fingering technique (re meri), and it took me a long time to get a sense of the music.

When I start a new piece I often don't know what it should sound like (I often can't obtain a recording).  The music emerges gradually as I practice the piece from the sheet music, first getting the notes in tune, then the rhythms, then speeding it up closer to the speed it is supposed to be played.

Activities of the Twelve Months in Edo: December. By Toyohara Chikanobu (1838-1912).  

In the lesson the goal is to play the entire piece straight through with the teacher and do well enough to 'pass' and move on to the next piece.  Christopher is teaching the traditional way which is to cover a syllabus of about 73 sankyoku (chamber music) pieces, many of which are very similar, before starting on the Buddhist 'honkyoku' pieces, (which is my real goal).    Sankyoku pieces were generally written for shamisen, koto and shakuhachi and are basically Edo period pop music.  I am currently on number 15, so at current my rate of lessons I have at least 10 more years of sankyoku before I can start learning honkyoku!

Another phenomenon is that when you play with and for your teacher you playing is much worse than usual.  I generally don't get properly warmed up (which 'calibrates' the mouth positions to hit the different notes), and the effect of stress on your mouth also helps knock your airstream off-target, so that notes I have been hitting confidently in practice sound worse or disappear entirely.   Also we often play the piece at a different speed from how I practiced it, which rather throws me.   This is all normal and the teacher makes allowances for it in evaluating your progress.

Anyway this lesson was a shocker.  I had to bring Hannah who wouldn't sit still and was distracting.   I was missing much more notes than usual and couldn't find the rhythms in the music that Id been playing in my practice.  And I'd also misread some parts of the music when Id practiced.   And I had even more trouble than usual keeping the beat.   So, understandably Christopher gently suggested that I should work on the piece some more.    Not a good result for 3 month practice on a piece didn't like much!

So I booked another lesson on the Saturday of my flight back to Hong Kong and worked on the piece  intensively all week at Baba's house, trying to make the necessary corrections and adjustments.   I worked on Kaji Makura until I got a much better sense of the music and found that I rather liked it.   And kept going until I was rather sick of it again, but felt I could play it through pretty decently.  

Of course, during the lesson it still fell apart, and it became obvious I need to do even more work with the metronome to improve my rhythm.  And I still cant play the tegoto at the speed it is supposed to be played.   But at least I 'passed' and can spend the next 3 months on a new piece 'Mama no Kawa'.      

"Kaji Makura 'A Rudder for My Pillow' is one of the finest examples of the kyofu tegoto mono, a sub-genre of sankyoku that reached its peak of development under Kengyo Kikuoka (1792-1847). The form is typical of tegoto mono: two vocal sections, called the mae uta and ato uta, are separated by an instrumental interlude called the tegoto...   A courtesan, her life drifting like the boat upon which she works, longs for a man who will forget her unseemly past and love her for her pure heart".    (source including Japanese at this link)

The dipping oars
Raise clouds of spray
Across the waters.
Firm in their stand,
The bamboo reeds
Make me sad
Through the sleepless nights
On this river boat.

Night after night
My thoughts torment me.
Is it the waves,
My tears,
Or the dew dripping
Through the grass roof,
That soaks my sleeves
Bound up in sorrow?
I drift here and there
To drown my sadness,
With a rudder
As my pillow.

However far
My travel takes me,
Let the final destination
Be the foot of a pine tree
Along the shore.
A firm pledge of love
Is all I ask,
All I ask of you.

I place my heart
In your hands.
Hold it there
Forever and ever.

Geishas on a balcony by the Kamo River in Kyoto with their students (Maikos). c. 1920 

"Mama no Kawa, literally 'The River of Let It Be,' refers to the despair of a courtesan who, having given up her struggle with faithless love, views her life in the floating world with sad resignation. The song is composed in the typical tegoto-mono form".   (link)

Is a dream a floating world,
Or a floating world a dream?
Living in a quarter
Called 'Dream Village,'
Yet pining for a man from the
River of Memory.
Seduced by his honey-tongued
Sincerity one night,
I drifted with him
Along the River of Wedlock.

But his heart was
Cool as water,
And he visits me
With the fragrance
Of others
On his collar and sleeves.
Of all the nerve!
Awakened by the 'Kawai, kawai'
Of the morning crow,
Tears of vexation flow
Into the River of Let it Be.

There are some videos of 'Mama no Kawa' on You Tube although the ensemble version together with Shamisen and koto sounds to me quite different from the solo shakuhachi part.