礫川餘光's interview with Tomimori Kyozan 2

Track 3

So when the shakuhachi began to merge with the strings, the need to study scales emerged. Before the genroku (of the edo) period, people changed the lengths of shakuhachi to play in ensemble. However, after the genroku period, around the time of the first Kurosawa Kinko, 1.8 shakuhachi became the standard size. As a result, shakuhachi pieces needed to be transposed to different scales. Then, five scales of shakuhachi music emerged.

"Mukai Reibo" and "Koku Reibo" in kinko-ryu were transposed to the akebono scale. "Sanya Sugagaki" and "Kumoi Jishi" were transposed to the kumoi scale. These are very precious pieces, as they show traits of transposition and the five scales. The music score(s) of these pieces recorded around the time were also well written, much better than those of myoan shakuhachi. Half tones were also being used in kinko-ryu only after the meiji period. They were not used initially.

[Tomimori doesn't seem to explain well in the first part. He probably wants to point out that prior to the influence of strings, all the shakuhachi pieces were played in the same scale. Not sure about this]