Hi All!
Happy to say that my first shamisen came in! I asked Kyle about the size and he said it looks like a nagauta / chuuzao. I’m very pleased with it and will definitely give it a thorough cleaning. I have it tuned in CGC but the strings do feel a bit loose from what I was expecting. I like the tone and can’t wait to start learning some songs.
Any help on the what the Japanese on the instrument says would be much appreciated. My 1 year of Chinese 101 from college aren’t helping much with this kanji haha…
Hello
小林安枝
It’s a name, and likely the prior owner. Kobayashi Yasue/Ae (Unsure of which reading)
This shamisen is not a nagauta - you can tell by the neck shape. Nagauta shamisen have gentle curves called hatomune.
This shamisen may be a kind of chuuzao, but which is hard to tell.
Based on the pictures, my gut says tanzao. Tanzao are short necked shamisen made for high registers, and are somewhat common in min’yo instruments.
If you give me additional dimensional data, I can probably class it.
That makes so much sense to me about the size because I’m using the CGC tuning and the strings don’t feel taut at all. I was considering bringing it up to DAD but didn’t want to risk too much tension on the neck. I think I may do this now!
Which dimensions would you need? Where do I measure? I’m definitely interested myself…
This is my general guide for classing shamisen.
Measure the length of the shamisen’s footprint from the tip of the nakagosaki (the wooden bit the neo ties to) to the curved edge of the tenjin. This is your general type (tanzao or seisun)
Measure the width of the fingerboard under the chibukuro. This is your neck class. (hoso, chuu, futo)
Measure the length and width of the flat drum of the dou at the center. You want skin edge to skin edge. (This is your dou size; niban ~ nagoya ~ nagauta ~ gorindai ~ … ~ nanabudai)
The width of the neck is over 2.6cm so it appears to be a chuuzao. And when you mentioned the hatomune I discovered it was in fact a jiuta. Haven’t checked the body dimensions out yet but this has been extremely helpful.
Definitely check the body size too.
A jiuta has the neck shape your shamisen has, but it (by definition) does not have a mechanical sawari. We see the jiuta shape in at least min’yo and tsugaru shamisen too.
