Founded by Kondō Sōetsu (1820 to 66) in Nagasaki.
Very fond of music as a child, he excelled in the “charamala” street vendor’s flute, and was nicknamed “Charamela Sōetsu” Soon he took to the shakuhachi becoming very proficient. As an adult, he moved to Kyoto and went to Myoan-ji where he studied under the supervisor priest Ozaki Shinryu. Sōetsu later rose to the position of Supervisor Priest and afterwards based himself in Osaka. He learned jiuta and koto pieces, as he was adopted into the family of the famous Jiuta master Furukawa Kengyō and notated Jiuta and koto pieces in order to create shakuhachi parts for them. From this time on, the number of his students grew. Before Sōetsu, there was an Osaka shakuahachi player named Kachiku, who also had several students. When Sōetsu arrived on the scene, however, most of Kachiku’s students decided they wanted to study with Sōetsu. Kachiku himself went to learn from Sōetsu, who by now had become an undisputed master of the instrument. His style, officially called the “Myoan Sōetsu Style” included such persons as Majima Kakuo, Tsukahara Gyokudō, and Kida Kakushu who became the pillars of the post-Meiji Restoration shakuhachi world in Osaka. The Sōetsu style doesn’t exist today, but many of the Kansai shakuhachi players where strongly influenced by the Sōetsu style.


From Christopher Yohmei Blasdel’s and Yuko Kamisongo’s “The Shakuhachi a manual for learning”