14th
About me
I’m Kenji, a Japanese-American and self-taught sanshin enthusiast.
I first encountered the sanshin when I moved to Okinawa four years ago, but it wasn’t until a year had passed before I started gaining interest in the instrument. As a foreign student at Ryukyu University, I soon joined the exchange student sanshin group and began teaching myself to play. As new international students cycled in and out of the school, the sanshin circle soon became a classroom where I passed on my basic knowledge of the sanshin to other foreign students. Eventually, I imperceptibly became the leader of the group, and as a group of non-Japanese non-Okinawan international students, we were often requested to play at various international events on Okinawa; in one event where we were asked to play for Aleida Guevara, eldest daughter of Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Nowadays, since I’ve “graduated” from the Japanese programs at Ryudai, the sanshin group has been passed on to other foreign students who I continue to play and perform with.
I also rant and ramble on my personal blog, which you can find here: gokenji.net
About the site
You’ll notice that If you google “sanshin,” there are virtually no real results. No real results because there are no English websites dedicated to sanshin information and help, which is why I started a site titled “chikuten.com” for sharing instructional sanshin materials. That was over a year ago, and when the time came to renew that site’s subscription with the web host, I couldn’t afford the fees and was forced to shut down. Luckily, this drove me to even better options with Tumblr, a powerful tumblelog tool that I decided to use to create this quasi how-to sanshin site.I hope this site can provide you with information on how to play the sanshin.
:)
Disclaimer (just in case):
I’m still an amateurish n00b by many ends, which means that you shouldn’t take everything I say verbatim. However, just because I’m a beginner doesn’t mean that I haven’t picked up various bits of useful info and experience in the few years that I’ve been playing.
I hope I can help by sharing what I’ve learned, but use your own judgment when making decisions.
