1…1/2…1/4…1/8…

It is often said of koten honkyoku that they have “free rhythm.” While this statement is fundamentally true, it also invites frequent misunderstanding, for people have a tendency to interpret this as meaning they can play honkyoku any old way they like. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is true that there is not fixed rhythm to follow, but there are numerous places in all honkyoku where, if you miss the timing, the general feeling of the piece will fall apart.

There is a kind of rhythmic pattern in honkyoku that follows this mathematical pattern: 1…1/2…1/4…1/8… and so on. This pattern appear all over in honkyoku, probably in more places than you’ve noticed so far. For example, it appears in the “mawashi-yuri” technique, the “Hi—Hi-Hi-Hi-I----“ phrase, and numerous others.

Most players do not speed up in the right way and as much as they need to. They speed up gradually, which looses the effect of the phrase. One way to get the image of this pattern is to imagine a bouncing ball, each successive bounce getting closer and closer to the ground. In order to make this effect, the beginning bounce has to be longer and the later bounces shorter than most people are used to playing.

If you master the feeling of this pattern and can apply it to the various techniques where it appears, your honkyoku playing will become more alive. No more will people say that hearing shakuhachi makes them sleepy.