In 1985, ATSUYA OKUDA opened Zensabo - a studio for shakuhachi in Kokubunji, Tokyo - after retiring from a 20-year career playing jazz trumpet. Okuda uses jinashikan exclusively. These nobekan or one-piece instruments are made adding as little as possible to the natural bore of the bamboo just as shakuhachi were made in ancient times. Okuda plays honkyoku only, but very much in his own style, emphasizing the many tone colors jinashikan are able to express. While essentially self-taught, Okuda has intensively studied the playing of Watazumi and other great masters. His approach to shakuhachi is, at the same time, influenced by a deep knowledge of Western musical genres, such as jazz and classical, as well as traditional Japanese music. Until the Spring of 2002, Okuda refused to record his playing in the belief that only by listening to its live sound can one truly understand jinashi shakuhachi.

S-O2a THE SOUND OF ZEN CD [J] $17.50 Shakuhachi honkyoku performed on jinashikan. The CD was recorded in one take.

ATSUYA OKUDA, THE SOUND OF ZEN
by Clive Bell
(This review originally appeared in Wired Magazine)

In 1985 Atsuya Okuda turned his back on a twenty year career playing jazz trumpet, and dedicated himself to teaching shakuhachi in Tokyo. Okuda subscribes to a purist, Zen-oriented approach to the instrument. As shown in the sleeve photos, he cuts bamboo in the hills and crafts his own flutes, which remain as natural and unworked as possible - no lacquered bore, no inlaid mouthpiece. This type of shakuhachi is called hocchiku, and the sound is fragile and intimate, a world away from the full, projected sound of the concert hall performer. In fact Okuda was apparently reluctant to make a recording at all, but we should be glad he has, for he is probably the finest player of his type since the death in 1992 of the Zen monk Watazumi (acclaimed by Steve Lacy as his favourite improviser in Wire 225). Okuda's sound may be quiet, but his playing has terrific subtlety and a patience of almost geological dimensions - if a rock in a Zen garden could play music, this is what! it would sound like. His delicate phrasing on the ancient piece "Shin-kyorei", tinged with multiphonic chords, is a joy to hear. The concluding 17 minute version of "Koku", the ultimate hymn to Zen emptiness, is performed on a longer flute, and here Okuda reaches in deep, both in terms of pitch and spirituality.