Taking The Tradition Out Of Traditional: The Shakuhachi In The Naruto Anime
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2021
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University of Hawaii at Manoa
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In my five years playing the shakuhachi (the traditional Japanese bamboo flute), I have noticed that with increasing frequency, people come up to me with new and interesting ways in which they associate the sound of the instrument. The traditional association—and the reason I wanted to study the instrument—was its history as a Zen Buddhist tool to gain enlightenment. This is also almost the exclusive discourse in academic literature. However, among the public this association is changing, and I am more likely to hear audience members mention how they have heard the sound in and associate the instrument with its use in modern compositions like Tōru Takemitsu’s November Steps and popular contexts like in a track of Linkin Park, Hollywood movies like Jurassic Park, video games like Okami, and anime like Naruto. With the global rise of Japanese popular and traditional culture and the Japanese government’s use of it as a political and economic tool to increase soft power and their status as a cultural superpower through government programs such as “Cool Japan,” phenomena like this are ever more important to examine. This thesis aims to investigate a small portion of this phenomenon, in particular the use of the shakuhachi in Naruto. I break down the dissociation from its traditional meanings and uses in the Zen honkyoku repertoire and sankyoku music and its transformation into a consumed sound. Using transcriptions of the score, I analyze how the shakuhachi is utilized in the score and why, connecting it to Japanese and Western sounds, scales, and genres. Finally, I also use surveys and an interview to evaluate fan reaction to these items as well as their own creations using the sounds of the instrument. Throughout this thesis I argue that although the shakuhachi is still very much connected to the history and culture, without this knowledge many Naruto fans are creating and attaching connections, meanings, and value to the shakuhachi that are linked to this history and culture but at the same time new and detached from it.
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