About myself

Nothing is more boring than people telling you "their story". But as you probably need some kind of information to assess what is presented here, well, here is "my Shakuhachi story" in a nutshell.

(For Information about work, research and publications: www.oliver-aumann.de)

I first encountered the Shakuhachi in 1986 during a three months stay at a Zen-temple near Kyoto and took my first lessons in 1990 with Hanada Ikkei 花田一葦 (1934-2014). Hanada Ikkei was a senior Shakuhachi teacher of the Komusō temple Itchō-ken 一朝軒 in Fukuoka and professor for philosophy (Ethics and History of Ethics) at Kyūshū University until 1997.

After returning to Germany, that's where I'm originally from, I continued to take lessons with Michael Gentō Jäckel who had studied the same Shakuhachi tradition in Fukuoka a couple of years earlier. I myself was at that time a student of Japanology and History of East-Asian Art in Heidelberg and in 1994 got the opportunity to study in Japan. I got permission to study at Kyūshū-University and professor Hanada became my academic advisor. Under his guidance I completed the master course with a thesis in Japanese about the "Religious teachings of the Komusō" in 1997. At the same time I was taking Shakuhachi lessons two or three times a week and learned all the traditional pieces taught at Itchō-ken-temple.

After his retirement in 1997 Hanada Ikkei moved to Germany to Breddorf, a village near Bremen, and I became a graduate student of Japanology, Religious Studies and Philosophy at Munich University (LMU). He started to teach Shakuhachi in Germany and I continued to take lessons with him regularly for five more years until 2002. 

After I had completed my doctorate in Japanology I started living and working in Osaka in 2003 where I am still living. Hanada Ikkei's former teacher at Itchō-ken, Iso Jōzan 磯譲山, kindly recommend me to Monden Tekikū 門田笛空 a Komusō-Shakuhachi player and teacher in Osaka and head of the "Society for the Study of Classical Shakuhachi" Koten-shakuhachi-kenkyū-kai 古典尺八研究会. He admitted me into his group and there I studied all the pieces of his tradition in his particular playing style. 

In 2007 I received a teaching license (shihan 師範) and the Komusō-name Tekiryū 笛龍. I continued to take lessons with Monden Tekikū and did not start teaching myself until Monden Tekikū asked me to do so shortly before his retirement in 2011.