JAPANESE MUSIC

a form of East Asian music derived in large part from Chinese and Korean sources but also containing remnants of its indigenous northern (Ainu) culture. In later years Japan's isolation as an island nation permitted its music to develop without further foreign influence of great consequence. Stone whistles of the Jomon culture (3rd millennium BC) are the earliest evidence of musical instruments in Japan. In the Yayoi period (3rd century BC to 3rd century AD) bronze bells were being made. Excavated tombs of the Tumulus period (c. 250c. 500), when the Yamato people became dominant in Japan, reveal figurines (haniwa) depicting musicians and musical instruments, among them the barrel drum, four- and five-stringed zithers, and croatal bells. In 453 a Korean emperor sent 80 musicians to the funeral of a Japanese ruler, and in the 6th century Japan accepted Buddhism and began sending select converts to China for training in the traditional rituals, including the use of music. By the 8th century the documented history of Japanese music had been established. During the Heian period (7941185) the various kinds of music, imported and indigenous, were arranged in an order that remained unchanged until modern times. The general term To-gaku (T'ang music) embraced all music from China and South and Central Asia and the standardized instrumentation consisting of bamboo flutes (oteki) and short bamboo double-reed instruments (hichiriki) played in unison, mouth organ (sho), three percussion instruments providing repeated patternsgong (shoko), small double-side drum (kakko), barrel-shaped drum (taiko)and two stringed instruments supplying a drone (koto, biwa). All Korean, northeast Asian, and Manchurian music was incorporated into Koma-gaku, the instrumentation consisting of a Korean flute (Koma-bue) and hichiriki in unison and three percussion instruments (taiko, shoko, and the hourglass-shaped drum san-no-tsuzumi). The term mikagura was used for the music of the imperial Shinto rites and some song dances of the earliest times, accompanied by a low-pitched flute (kagura-bue), hichiriki, and the six-stringed zither wagon. Two new types of composition were incorporated in court music: saibara, songs of provincial pack-horse drovers, heard with Chinese instrumentation, and roei, poems in the Chinese style chanted in a sophisticated manner and accompanied only by flute, hichiriki, and mouth organ. During the 12th and 13th centuries Buddhist religious music was reformed. Hymns in the vernacular ( shomyo), flexible and expressive in character, were added to the old liturgical chants (bombai). In the military-dominated Kamakura (11921333) and Muromachi (13381573) periods, the No theatre rose to prominence. Kure-gaku and To-sangaku, earlier popular types of music, had survived in rural dance pantomimes (dengaku), and popular acrobatic performances (sarugaku-no) were gradually absorbed into the tradition. During the centuries of feudal government, itinerant Zen Buddhist monks, the komuso, played the bamboo end-blown flute (shakuhachi), and wandering bards, or heike-biwa, recited tales to the accompaniment of the four-stringed lute (biwa). The century of transition from the feudal era to the Tokugawa regime (16031868) was a time of a strong Western influence exerted by Spanish and Portuguese missionaries. In the mission schools Christian hymns, Gregorian litanies, and secular European music were taught, and this influence and the knowledge of Western melody and musical expression merged with folk song and the various types of entertainment music of the period. With the growth of cities and the increasing wealth of the merchant class, the puppet theatre (bunraku; joruri) became popular, as did the kabuki theatre. The samisena long-necked, three-stringed instrument played with a plectrumbecame the principal instrument of kabuki accompaniments. Secular concert music (solo songs and chorus in alternation, accompanied by percussion instruments, samisen, and koto groups) was of three schools: Naga-uta, Tokiwazu, and Kyomoto. Instrumental solo music for the 13-stringed koto was greatly favoured, as were the many variants of geisha songs and chamber music for voice, koto, and shakuhachi. The modern period dates from the opening of the country after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. French military music had already been introduced by some independent feudal lords (daimyo), and in the 1870s the imperial court pressed for the immediate introduction of Western music. Under the baton of the Englishman William Fenton, the imperial musicians were the first to perform an all-Western orchestral concert (1877). In public education Japanese melody and music theory were abolished, and Western nomenclature, notation, harmony, and melody were imposed. After the establishment of the Imperial Academy of Music in Tokyo (1878), Western music made rapid headway. Most cities by the mid-20th century had one or several modern orchestras, and Japanese music of former times survived only in closed guilds, in the various Buddhist and Shinto sects, and in no and kabuki theatre.