Japanese Traditional Instruments

About this book

An academic catalogue gives you dates and classifications. A tutor gives you one instrument. Japanese Traditional Instruments does the missing job: 200 Japanese instruments — the wagakki themselves, their makers, their regions and their sounds — in one uniform format, every entry giving Origin & Tradition, Making & Materials, Sound & Playing, and Listening, Buying & Care, each entry written in full at 200+ words.

The shamisen in its five stage tempers and the sanshin of Okinawa. Koto and its seventeen-string bass, biwa in four regional voices, shakuhachi in every length from Zen temples to contest halls. Taiko of log and stave, temple bells two thousand years deep, the gagaku orchestra preserved from Tang China — and the workshops, woods, skins and bamboo behind them all, treated honestly, including the animal-material questions most guides avoid.

A front chapter teaches you to listen in four checks — attack, resonance, breath & skin, and ma, the charged silence between sounds. There is no audio and there are no photographs: the sounds are taught in words, for the ear, because these instruments reward listeners who know what they are hearing. Prices, stock and schedules are never asserted; every entry asks you to confirm them on the maker's or venue's official channel.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.