The Temperaments of the Shakuhachi Pipes Owned by the Horyu-ji Temple and the Shoso-in Repository

Abstract

This article investigates in detail the pipe lengths and the temperaments of the shakuhachi preserved at the Horyu-ji Temple, as well as those of the eight specimens owned by the Shoso-in Repository, in order to examine their provenance, including the countries of origin. It has thus far widely been understood that the shakuhachi was invented by LU Cai (呂才: circa 600-665) of the Tang (唐) Dynasty. Therefore, the measurement of the instruments of both the Horyu-ji Temple and the Shoso-in was long considered to have been based on Tang-xiao-chi (唐小尺) measurement, even though some of them at the Shoso-in do not match it. Given such discrepancies, I propose, based on the Old Book of Tang (945) and the New Book of Tang (1060), as well as the residual sum of squares of the distinct temperaments, to classify shakuhachi instruments into categories: pre-LU and post-LU. Through this classification it becomes clear that the pre-LU pipes are one chi (尺) and eight cun (寸) long and are unstable in temperaments, while the post-LU ones can vary in length according to the ancient Chinese pitch pipes (twelve size in total) and are stable in temperaments in accordance with the method of sanfen-sunyi (三分損益, a kind of the circle-of-fifths system). This finding also indicates that the shakuhachi preserved at the Horyu-ji Temple was a pre-LU one, whereas the ones at the Shoso-in conformed to post-LU. In addition, I argue, based on my close study of the Book of Sui (656) and of the 95 % confidence interval of the residual error for the theoretical values of the pipe lengths, that it is reasonable to classify the pipe length of the specimens both at the Horyu-ji Temple and the Shoso-in into two measurements, that is, those based on the Tang-xiao-chi and those based on the Wei-chi (魏尺). Since the four shakuhachi instruments given by Uija-wang (義慈王, Uija of Baekje, 599-660) have pipe length in accordance with the Wei-chi, we can say with fair certainty that the Wei-chi was used in Baekje (百済).