Komusō

The Komusō (虚無僧) ("priest of nothingness" or "monk of emptiness") were wandering non-monastic lay Buddhists from the warrior-class (samurai and rōnin) who were noted for wearing straw basket hats and playing the shakuhachi bamboo flute, nowadays called suizen ('Zen of blowing (the flute)'). During the Edo period (1600–1868) they obtained various rights and privileges from the bakufu, the ruling elite.

The 18th and 19th century saw a popularization of shakuhachi-playing among lay-people, accompanied by the interpretation and legitimation of this laicization in spiritual and esthetical terms derived from the Zen-tradition, to which the komusō nominally belonged. In the 19th century the komusō-tradition became known as the Fuke-shū (Japanese: 普化宗, Fuke sect) or Fuke Zen, after the publication of the Kyotaku denki (1795), which created a fictitious Rinzai Zen lineage starting with the eccentric Zen master Puhua (J. Fuke) of Tang China. This narrative legitimized the existence and rights of the komusō, but also ushered in the “bourgeoisization” of shakuhachi-playing in the 18th century.

The rights of the komusō were abolished in 1867, like other Buddhist organisations. Interest in their music style stayed alive in secular audiences, and a number of the pieces they composed and performed, called honkyoku, are preserved, played, and interpreted in the popular imagination as a token of Zen-spirituality, continuing the narrative which developed in the 18th and 19th century.