How ocarinas spread to japan
How ocarinas spread to japan
https://www.aketagawamuseum.org/takashi_aketagawa/
Hautboy found this page stating that Aketagawa started making ocarinas inspired by Fiehn's around 1928, and that he found one in a department store. That implies that Fiehn were distributing ocarinas outside of Europe.
https://www.aketagawamuseum.org/takashi_aketagawa/
An ocarina can get some way towards that, if you use a single-chamber with limited range. But the Japanese makers went the opposite way. Wider pitch range and drastically restricted dynamics, to fit in with the blandly mushy easy-listening idiom of American postwar light music (which is where the anime/game style comes from). The only ocarina players I've heard attempting the grit you find in old Japanese music were a young Korean trio. Korean trad has teeth too.
Are there any Japanese makers who get this?
Jack Campin
04-17-2026, 01:48 PM #2I have just been listening to some traditional Japanese flute music. Not so much shakuhachi as the music for the Noh drama. This uses a special kind of fife with a narrowing insert in the bore that makes it overblow by a seventh rather than an octave. Both this Noh music (with its spare and explosive percussion) and the shakuhachi use extreme dynamic contrasts - it's like they practice by spitting holes through a brick. I don't know any other tradition that uses flutes for such wild ferocity.
An ocarina can get some way towards that, if you use a single-chamber with limited range. But the Japanese makers went the opposite way. Wider pitch range and drastically restricted dynamics, to fit in with the blandly mushy easy-listening idiom of American postwar light music (which is where the anime/game style comes from). The only ocarina players I've heard attempting the grit you find in old Japanese music were a young Korean trio. Korean trad has teeth too.
Are there any Japanese makers who get this?