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Simura Zenpo

志村禅保

Simura Zenpo
Shakuhachi
simura@osaka-geidai.ac.jp

Simura Zenpo is a performer of Jinashi Shakuhachi and Long Shakuhachi, and a Shakuhachi researcher. He graduated from Osaka University of Arts with a major in Technology of Music. As a student Simura studied shakuhachi with Chikuho Sakai, the founder of the Chikuho School, and later under Shodo Sakai, the third headmaster of the Chikuho School. He mastered the Chikuho pieces, Myoan Taizan pieces, Kinpu Ryu-Nezasa pieces, Oshu, Kyushu and other schools' Shakuhachi Koten Honkyoku pieces. Along with his academic investigations and research activities, he learned performing techniques and pieces of the komuso shakuhachi from memory keepers around the country. Simura earned a Ph.D. in Musicology from Ochanomizu University, Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences, and published the book An Organology of Old Pipe Shakuhachi. He presently is a professor in the music department at Osaka University of Arts. Simura is a permanent director of the Kyochiku Zenshi Housankai, director of NPO Corporation Japan Shakuhachi Association, and Chikuho Shakuhachi Schoool. He is a member of the Society for Research in Asiatic Music (Tôyô Ongaku Gakkai, TOG), Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ), the Society for Ethno-Arts, the Musicological Society of Japan, the Acoustical Society of Japan, the Japanese Association for the Study of Popular Music, and Komuso Kenkyu Kai. He also opened a jinashi shakuhachi research group and a reference library "SYOHU BUNKO" in 2009 to research and preserve old shakuhachi (kokan) and to provide a place to reevaluate shakuhachi and pass on in the future.

Performing Activities: Simura has done performance research via replicas of old instruments and deciphered old notation, he has performed and lectured at the International Shakuhachi Festivals as a guest lecturer and performer (in Boulder, Tokyo, New York, Sydney, etc.). He has performed Komuso Honkyoku, contemporary music, and popular music, etc. in Europe, Asia, and America as well as Japan. He has also appeared on NHK FM, TV lecture for the Open University of Japan, and many radio shows.

Creative Activities: Simura has developed the Cyber Shakuhachi that blended Japanese traditional instruments and shakuhachi with computer. His live computer music series called "Takekan no Uchu (Universe of the Bamboo Flute) that aimed for the modernization of komuso shakuhachi (collaboration work with Laboratories of Image Information Science and Technology) won awards at the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) in Denmark in 1994 and in Hong Kong in 1996.

Also Known As Shimura Satoshi
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Publications

Title Kanji Publisher Year Pages Language
Selections of Potential Playing Techniques on the Syakuhati: Changes of Stylistic Needs Through Periods. In Music Cultures in Interaction: Cases Between Asia & Europe, edited by Usaburo Mabuchi and Osamu Yamaguchi

Tokyo: Academia Music 1994 156-167
Techniques and Spirit of Making the Shakuhachi: For an Understanding of the Two Spiritual Worlds in Existence Today. - In Der "schone" Klang: studien zum historischen Musikinstrumentenbau in Deutschland und Japan unter besonderer Berucksichtigung des alten Nurnberg, edited by Dieter Krickeberg.

Nurnberg: Germanisches National Museum 1996 270-277