Chip Off the Old Legacy

left: Tatsuya Kodo Araki, Tono, Iwate-ken, Japan

My dad, former Kinko-ryū shakuhachi sōke (often translated as “Grand Master” but literally is closer to headmaster) would go to great lengths to avoid confrontation. I mean, he traveled to America by boat in the sixties to escape it. Unfortunately for him, there is an entire structure in place that requires constant maintenance in traditional Japanese music, and abandoning it had severe consequences, regardless of how valid his reasons were. 

Confrontation was at the heart of his entire childhood experience. Putting aside the war-torn Japan of 1938 my dad was born into, he was only eight when circumstances forced him to start playing shakuhachi, just two short years after he lost his father. Kodo IV (Atsumu) died in 1943 from pneumonia after he refused to cancel a concert, despite dire warnings from his doctor. He played what was his final performance and died early the next morning. My father was six at the time and so never played shakuhachi with his own father. He never met his grandfather (Shinnosuke, Kodo Araki III) who died aged just 56 in 1935. 

The death of Kodo IV not even ten years after Kodō III’s passing created a power vacuum. A number of other schools spied a potential weakness in the line and tried to assert themselves as sōke of the entire Kinko ryū (the style of shakuhachi music my family has been known for for generations). My father was named Kodō V at age twelve in hopes of defending the family legacy. In fairness, he was also prodigiously talented.

Music was a literal escape for my dad but not a joyful one. Shakuhachi practice was his only escape from everything crashing down around him. Like something out of a story book, he would retreat to a closet with nothing but his music and a candle for hours at a time, either to escape the sounds of tanks rumbling down the street, or the frequent and fierce battles his mother engaged in with suspected interlopers. 

He contracted tuberculosis at age 10 which badly scarred his lungs and was convinced—or maybe hopeful—that his health would preclude a life as a performing artist for him. He resigned himself to teaching and to his own practice—practice being the one thing he could control. Bear in mind, this was all before he turned 18. In 1963, the 25 year old Tatsuya Kodo Araki spotted an escape route from Japan and took it.

Tatsuya Kodo Araki c. 1963 en route to America

A student of my grandfather’s living in Southern California arranged for him to visit UCLA before heading to Seattle where he was the first visiting artist at the brand new ethnomusicology department at the University of Washington (also, where he met my mother). In order to earn a Master’s degree from an American university, he took a similar position at Wesleyan University (where I was born). The degree he earned from one of Japan’s most prestigious universities (Keio) did not carry the same weight outside of Japan.

His thesis carefully avoids mentioning his lineage except where absolutely necessary, although he does go to some lengths to expose the shaky ground upon which shakuhachi historians stake their reputations. History is written by the victors, or so it goes; this goes double in academia. He had already been told by some in the ethnomusicology circles that he could never truly understand shakuhachi music because he was “just a musician,” which never sat particularly well with him. As bitter as it made him, he bore it in silence. Rather than wade in and fight, my father chose to remove himself from the scrum, and with him went any chance of my family’s place in history remaining above the Kinko-ryu fray that has existed since WWII.

He traveled to Japan less frequently over the years with an unusually long drought in the 80s. By not fully participating in the hōgaku (Japanese traditional music) world in Japan, he widened the gap between his generation and those of his father and grandfathers. Japan didn’t wait for the return of the prodigal, and many simmering resentments were left to boil over, even among some of my father’s allies.

So, what’s left is me, with no formal academic experience; just hours, months, and years sitting across a small table from my father, the last real Kinko-ryu sōke, learning music.

More anon,

Hanz