For those of you who don't know this gentleman behind me

this is the older of the two Yoshida brothers

To ask officially

Today is a bit of a special day. I'm coming out to have a new shamisen built

All right, so I've been here for a little while now

We're doing the Japanese thing of sitting back

Getting to know each other

having tea

And I have yet to get to take a look at single Shamisen. And this is really what it's about because in Japan

There's something called 'Wa', or harmony that kind of needs to be built before any kind of transaction can happen

so we're taking time just chatting getting to know each other, learning about each other's business and life and everything we do and

Really excited to see what kind of 'Sao' or 'Neck' he's gonna bring out

When it comes to choosing a shamisen the 'Sao' or neck is everything

It not only contributes to most of the costs but also has the greatest impact on the sound

Once the neck has been chosen. The rest of the shamisen is built around that neck

they've brought out eight different 'Sao'

or next for me, and it's...

The ones over here are like...people don't spend this much on cars. Let's just put it that way

So right now I'm torn between these two. Let me show you

All right, so it's just about nighttime now and for reasons that I can't even begin to explain because it would take forever

I've decided to go with this one.

It's legitimately getting dark out that the Sun has gone down behind the mountains.

I have decided

All right, so it's the beginning of December right now and I've come back out to the Shamisen maker's shop

Let's kind of see the progress of things. I'm gonna get a little bit of a tour of the shop

He's gonna walk me through a bit of how the Shamisen is made. It's gonna be a fun day

That's gonna be the body to my shamisen right there.

This is it right here

This is to help the inner acoustics of the shamisen

There are some that are smooth inside but these ones have a much better sound and are usually reserved for higher level shamisen

This is like a mini one right here

All right

so I just learned that after the body's made

the shape starts to change and it makes it so that

it doesn't hold the skin as well

And so, one of the things that need to be done about a year after the actual 'Dō' is made

The 'Dō' is selected to match the shamisen by the way, so it was made about a year ago

But now we have to kind of grind and reshape some of the wood

to make sure that it actually holds when the skin is put on so that's what we're doing right now.

The body or 'Dō' was the first piece of my shamisen that I got to see Komatsu-San work on

It was really incredible to see him work

We worked on it for the better part of an hour. It had to be just right

There's no going back once a mistake is made

Let me show you this

So, I think it's a pretty obvious statement that every Shamisen starts from a piece of wood

But this wood... There are three main types of wood that Shamisen are made from just so you know

There's a really soft wood called 'Karin'. It was like a mid-range wood called 'Shitan'. And then there's 'Kōki'.

And Kōki's what the really good Shamisen are made of

It feels like I'm knocking on a rock. This thing really is heavy

Well, I could talk about this one piece of wood forever

because I have never actually seen the wood that the Shamisen are made of

This is pretty cool

I'll show you what I have seen which is like the base that they're cutting from

Okay, I put on a slightly wider lens for this next part

And I want to show you something really cool

It's because the kitchen floor just opened up

I'm way more excited about this that I probably should be

up until a moment ago, this here was just the kitchen floor

This area here, is something people really don't get to see

All of these are Shamisen 'Sao' necks

I don't know why I grabbed my neck

and all of these, are the 'Tanjin' the top part

Komatsu-San admitted that he does have a favorite. In fact one that he would probably never sell

And he was kind enough to show me the difference in how the sound resonates through the more expensive wood compared to the cheaper ones

I do think there's something beautiful about the fact that he has one that

he just doesn't want to sell it unless there's somebody that really understands it

One of the original offers I got was to actually have my shamisen made from scratch

but there's a lot of risk in that

Having the shamisen made from scratch, you never really know what you're gonna get until it's done

So my tuning pegs my 'Itomaki' are very special. The original, there's only two cents in the world

But I have them remade for me. This is...

Oh you know what? I'll just show you

These right here

Now very excitingly we're gonna be prepping the body of my shamisen to be skinned

Shamisen are traditionally skinned with animal skin, and I've never really been a big fan of that

But Komatsu-San has developed a synthetic shamisen skin.

That sounds almost exactly the same

Alright guys, so today is the day! I am currently out in the mountains of the area of Sagamihara

To pick up my new shamisen

And I couldn't be more excited

So as we get all the parts together for my shamisen

There's still one last part of the process is the 'Itomaki', the tuning pegs

Being fit to the shamisen

The process for each peg took an incredibly long time

with a constant cycle of minor adjustments and checks

until

finally

It's mind-blowing to me

The incredibly delicate level of expertise that goes into every little piece of the Shamisen

To see something as simple as the 'Itomaki' have that much effort put into them. It's just...

I don't even at words.

This particular shamisen breaks into three pieces and the joints are actually connected by gold

because it's a soft enough metal to match up with the wood and hold it nice and tight and

Then it was time to finally start assembling the shamisen

The excitement was real

Once the body was fully assembled

It was time to pick out the parts and accessories that would give the shamisen its look and personality

once all put together

Now it's just time to start putting it together so Komatsu-San is

Helping with that because obviously he's going to be a lot better at it than I am

Alright, so that's it. I've got my new shamisen. Now, I just need a couple years to get used to playing it