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'Komusō'? Social, Political, Economic, Ideological History
Causal Conditions & Overall Context Do Matter, Indeed!
IF NOT THIS: The CATHOLIC MISSIONARY INVASION in JAPAN:
Jesuit Catholic Missionary Francis(co) Xavier landed in Japan in 1549 in company with profit seeking traders and began to preach Christianity there.
Hundreds of thousands in all social strata converted to some strange version of that alien European religion.
Painting by an unnamed Japanese artist, dated 1580.
- AND THIS: The CRUEL PERSECUTION of CHRISTIAN BELIEVERS in JAPAN:
Since 1623, during the reign of the 3rd Tokugawa Shōgun named Iemitsu, 1604-1651,
Christians in Japan, foreign as native, were hunted down on a national scale,
cruelly inquistioned and executed if they did not
renounce and reject their Christian faith, once and for all, utmost demonstrably,
like with treading on a picture of either Jesus on the Cross,
or the Virgin Maria.
- THIS WOULD EVER NEVER HAVE HAPPENED: The 'KOMUSŌ':
Begging 'Komusō' by Takehara Shinkei, 1791
Courtesy of the National Museum of Denmark, Ethnographic Collection
SELECTED WORDS by TORSTEN OLAFSSON as of MARCH 2025 - in random order:
• "If you have not, probably never, seen and quite eagerly and thoroughly looked into the numerous written classical Japanese historical sources,
the many old pictures, you really don't know what you self proclaimed "shakuhachi historians" are writing and talking about!
That applies to both Ethnomusicologists, Musicologists, Japanologists, Ethnologists, Anthropologists, Sociologists and their like,
who boast academic degrees/titles such as "M.A.", "Ph.D." - and/or even: "Doctor" ... ?
• "The Edo Period 'Komusō' never put anything down in writing about "meditating with a shakuhachi", 'Suizen', or the like. Period."
• "13th century Shinchi Kakushin did in no way contribute to anything at all in the history, ideology and practice of "the" shakuhachi."
Left: Shinchi Kakushin sculpture, Cleveland Museum of Art
Right: Kyochiku Zenji Statue, Kyōto Myōan-ji. In: Tomimori Kyozan, 1979
• "It goes without saying that Shinchi Kakushin of course did not return to Japan in 1254 accompanied
by four "Chinese Buddhist laymen", a Chinese 'shakuhachi', and the classical music piece 'Kyorei'."
• "Legendary 'Kyochiku Ryōen Zenji',
虚竹了円禅師, was simply invented, made up, out of whole cloth; he never lived.
Neither did he ever compose 'Mukaiji' and 'Kokū' - and he certainly did not "found" the Myōan Temple in Kyōto.
Kyochiku is first ever mentioned by "name" in a document dated as late as 1735."
• "If you do not understand Indian Advaita Vedanta and Chinese Taoism, you'll never understand Mahayana Buddhism and Zen Philosophy."
• "Claiming that 'Komusō' practiced 'Suizen', be it even "Shakuhachi Meditation" - for personal fame, gain and profit -
is not only without merit and wrong but bordering on deception and fraud, and deeply criticizable."
• "How many of you Western shakuhachi teachers are selling your New Age Mindfulness and Healing servíces
as were it very "ancient tradition",
invented and practiced by 'Komusō' "religious & spiritual saviors"?"
• "At first, centuries of Japanese shakuhachi players, ideologues and "historians" have been lying excessively and
continuously about Shakuhachi History, Ideology and Practices ...
- then, first of all US American players and "historians", at least since the mid-1960s, and New Age Music, Mindfulness and Healing cultists have been doubling,
tripling down and made fabrication and falsification even more unreal, unimaginable, "otherworldly" - and deplorably misleading -
- especially by unqualified writers whose extensive misinformation and deception has been spreading like a wildfire
on the WWW Internet for more than 20 years."
• "When will the Global Shakuhachi World Adherents ever realize and admit to the fact
that they have all been disgracefully deceived and fooled regarding shakuhachi history reality?"
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