In my studies of the use of the Japanese shakuhachi in the Fuke sect of Zen Buddhism, I have been continually puzzled by the tradition which traces the playing of shakuhachi as a religious practice back to the T'ang period Chinese Zen (Chinese: Ch'an) figure P'u-hua (read Fuke in Japanese). This tradition, recorded in the middle Edo period source Kyotaku Denki but certainly much older, does not attempt to ascribe to Fuke either the playing of shakuhachi or any knowledge of it whatsoever. Indeed Fuke's only musical connection was his ringing of a bell as he wandered the streets, the sound of which is said to have been captured after his death by a shakuhachi-playing disciple, Chang Po, and turned into the first piece of the Fuke repertoire, Kyotaku. It is now generally accepted that this history was largely fabricated in order to legitimize the Fuke sect, by establishing an elaborate genealogy leading back to the very source of the Zen tradition in Tang period China and to a figure (Fuke) traditionally associated with Rinzai Gigen (Chinese: Lin Chi I-hsüan), one of the great figures of early Zen.