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The biwa (Japanese: 琵琶) is a Japanese short-necked wooden lute traditionally used in narrative storytelling. The biwa is a plucked string instrument that first gained popularity in China before spreading throughout East Asia, eventually reaching Japan sometime during the Nara period (710–794).
Shamisen are classified according to size and genre. There are three basic sizes: hosozao, chuzao and futozao. Examples of shamisen genres include nagauta, jiuta, min'yo, kouta, hauta, shinnai, tokiwazu, kiyomoto, gidayu and tsugaru. Shamisen used for traditional genres of Japanese music, such as jiuta, kouta, and nagauta, adhere to very strict ...
Popular in Edo's pleasure districts, the shamisen is often used in kabuki theater. Made from red sandalwood and ranging from 1.1 to 1.4 metres (3 ft 7 in to 4 ft 7 in) long, the shamisen has ivory pegs, strings made from twisted silk, and a belly covered in cat or dog skin or a synthetic skin.
The satsuma-biwa "emerged from interaction between moso and the samurai class" in Satsuma Province, starting a period of popularity for "modern biwa" until the 1930s, while the chikuzen-biwa had its origin in the 1890s in the Chikuzen region of Kyushu, drawing upon aspects of mōsō music, shamisen, and the satsuma-biwa technique. [13]
The biwa (琵琶 - Chinese: pipa), a form of short-necked lute, was played by a group of itinerant performers (biwa hōshi). The root of Biwa music was The Tale of the Heike. [7] Biwa hōshi organized into a guild-like association. The biwa is Japan's traditional instrument. [citation needed]
Blind musicians known as biwa hōshi at Tōdōza improved the instrument and created what would be the shamisen. They used the plectrum of the Japanese biwa to play the shamisen, thus creating the beginning of jiuta as shamisen music. Ishimura-Kengyo is particularly regarded as originator of shamisen music.
Sawari was first found in the biwa, and this quality was a desirable trait that biwa players wanted to reproduce in the shamisen. Thus, players began to use oversized plectrums for the shamisen instead of the fingers, and the 1st string was purposely laid lower at the nut of the instrument so that it purposely vibrated against the wood of the ...
Musicians and dancer, Muromachi period Traditional Japanese music is the folk or traditional music of Japan. Japan's Ministry of Education classifies hōgaku (邦楽, lit. ' Japanese music ') as a category separate from other traditional forms of music, such as gagaku (court music) or shōmyō (Buddhist chanting), but most ethnomusicologists view hōgaku, in a broad sense, as the form from ...