Episode 33 Kyushu Gottan

February 1, 2026

Kyushu Gottan

An all-wood folk instrument on the Southern part of Kyushu Island (Japan) with Masaki Kamimaki ​(上牧　正輝)

📍 Kyushu, Japan

His Website: http://www.yasasii-ko.jp/shop/moku/gottan.htm#
Mimatan Gottan Project: https://mimatangottan.wixsite.com/my-site/about-1  

Thoughts and Reflections

Finding the Gottan maker (Masaki-san) and the development of this trip was unique. I first reached out to the revitalization team on Instagram (Satoshi-san). Unbeknownst to me, he was working behind the scenes organizing the trip. He also worked in the government office, so through that, he organized an interpreter (Derek) and some tourism board worker (I'm not sure what his role was, he didn't do or say anything, but he did follow us around). So we had a whole party of 6 on set, when I normally have 2 maybe 3. It was humourous, that's all.

But the whole day was very free-flowing; on a whim, after the workshop, we decided to go to a cultural house in town to perform, which was exciting. It was swarming with old folks preparing the house with cute Halloween decorations, and then they swarmed me, which was adorable. I was interested in buying little rat ornaments; they insisted on giving it to me for free, but I negotiated to pay them a little. 

One segment that I cut from the video, was an old man in the cultural house who explained the history of the house and of the town, and answered my question of why this small town of Mimata was not absorbed into the bigger neighbor city of Miyakonojo.

It was great meeting with all of them. Masaki-san was great after the trip in sharing resources and research about the Gottan. Amongst the videos I've made, because of how unique this instrument is, and its rarity, I had to do more research than I typically do, and finding sources was challenging. One point of contention was our conflicting ideas of where the Gottan originated from. Traditional belief is that it came from Okinawa, while Masaki believes it came from Southern China. I wouldn't mind agreeing in this theory, but there's a lack of compelling evidence. 

I also hope that, in general, there can be more ethnomusical studies from the Japanese about their folk instruments. I also see a huge lack of research about Ainu instruments as well.