The Art of Sankyoku

Japanese musicians have few competitors when it comes to sustaining traditions while subtly updating them for today. Traditions are rarely static entities, hence, although the tracks here have antecedents going back centuries, three are compositions from the 19th-century Edo period. One is an arrangement of an old folksong written around the turn of the 20th century and associated with a northern province, and one is a recent composition by the celebrated Toshi Ichiyanagi (1933–2022). All but one fit the sankyoku genre: a trio of the eponymous shakuhachi flute, koto zither and shamisen lute, over which vocals are sprinkled. Sankyoku became popular during the Meiji era (1868–1912) as modernisation discarded age-old musicians’ guilds and the peregrinating shakuhachi-playing monks, and introduced a new urban concert culture. The trio on this album (curiously, their name translates as a quartet) are Reison Kuroda on shakuhachi, and Noriko Hirata and Yuiko Terai who play both koto and shamisen and also sing. Together and individually all three musicians now serve as ambassadors for Japan abroad. While the plucked shamisen is something of an acquired taste, the blends achieved by the trio are magical and evocative. The solo shakuhachi in ‘Oushu Sashi’ is unmissable, and Ichiyanagi’s ‘Transfiguration of Flowers’ brilliantly blends old techniques with avant-garde tremolos, chords, and improvisatory flurries.