Kodō Araki - The International Shakuhachi Society

Kodō Araki

Araki Kodō V
Denon - CLS-5219
1976

Track	Title	Kanji	Length	Artist
1	Shika no Tōne (Kinko Ryū)	鹿の遠音	08'31	Shakuhachi: Araki Kodō V
	The mountainside in late autumn, where cold arctic winds sweep the slopes, to envelop the darkness of the night in soundless sound. This piece uses the descriptive term "Distant Calls of the Deer" to tell of the pathetic, pitiful lot of wild animals who are about greet and endure the cold snows of the winter. Because it is generally presented by a plural number of instruments, it is generally considered that the passages represent male and female deer calling to each other, but this is not necessarily so; this rendition is delivered as a solo.
2	Konkai	吼かい	16'12	Shakuhachi: Araki Kodō V Shamisen: Satō Chikaki Voice: Satō Chikaki
	It is not too long ago that the fox, that legendary wild animal of the hills and plains, was to be found in the immediate vicinity of man and his society in Japan. Japanese foxes were believed to be endowed with magical powers, and my grandfather used to tell me tales of foxes that would employ those magical powers to make their appearances in the form of beautiful women, to trick people and cause them to get lost in the wilderness or mountains, or make them trip and falloff the furrows dividing the rice fields as they walked along the furrows. The comical absurdness of these tales used to make me unequivocally happy when I heard them as a child. Whether it is this piece, or the piece entitled KUZU NO HA, so many of these stories about foxes that appear in the traditional plays or dramas of Japan are sad tales that tell, for example, of foxes following people around or snuggling up to them, tales with a heart-rending pathos to them.
3	Chidori no Kyoku	千鳥の曲	12'01	Shakuhachi: Araki Kodō V Koto: Tani Sumi Voice: Tani Sumi
	This melody was the very first melody I performed on stage, an event that took place in January, 1950, when I performed together with a group of lovely girls who were studying under Shojuku Kojima. It also was my debut piece on television. Later on, I joined another teacher, Shinki Sato, but I still cherish this song in my heart, and although well over twenty years have gone by since, I still wish that I could return to that state of innocence I was in back in those days. The piece was composed by Kengyo Yoshizawa of Nagoya, in Central Japan, in 1855. It is put together in three sections, a prelude, an interlude, and a finale, and the prelude is adopted from the KOKIN WAKA SHU, a collection of the 31-syllable Japanese poems both old and new, while the finale comes from the KINYO SHU collection.
4	Zangetsu	残月	18'59	Shakuhachi: Araki Kodō V Koto: Ueno Kazuko Shamisen: Matsuo Keiko Voice: Matsuo Keiko
	It is now 33 years since my father, KODO IV, passed away. When I was a child, I used to dream about my father, but now I myself am approaching my father's age, and am, as he used to, playing with children of my own. Like the words in this piece, I find I can feel how the days go by one after the other, and life goes on in its everlasting cycles.