The shamisen belongs to the world of theater and entertainment of the Edo period, daughters of rising commercial class and nobility play koto, 2 members of koto family(wagon and gaku-so); the gaku-so is modeled after Chinese forms with 6 strings toned by 6 high bridges made of twig forks; then 12/13 strings with firm ivory or wooden bridges. Tradition claims Fujiwara Sadatoshi first brought solo koto music tradition of china to Japan in 19th century, during the Kamakura days the music disappeared in chaos of crumbling imperial power. The best source for koto information in early Edo period, Shichiku Shoshinshu is by Nakamura Sosan, printed the famous classics(Rokudan, Hachidan, Midare), Ryukyu pieces(Ichidan, Nidan); 17th century koto as dance accompaniment and ensembles, teacher Ikuta Kengyo founded new style of koto, based on shamisen music from Kyoto(jiuta), combined koto and shamisen to develop music, emphasize instrumental pats. Koto originally vocal accompaniment, jiuta ensemble music called sankyoku (music for three) shakuhachi became the 3rd instrument, Yamada Kengyo(end of 18th century) new style, borrowed style of Edo shamisen forms (Itchu-bushi, Kato-bushi) developed school with voiceline as more important. In early 19th century Yaezaki Kengyo of Kyoto further developed Ikuta jiuta by 2nd koto that played melody, independent from main koto. Composition called danawase, kyomono style came from Kyoto, became basic technique of Ikuta school, Ikuta school around Kansai district (geisha accompaniment) Yamada koto in Kanto district, 20th century new style music based on western ideas. Miyagi Michio, death 1957, marked end of era.
The generic term for koto music, sokyoku, 2 types singing with one oldest vocal kumiuta; poem singing called dan �steps�, Tsukushi-goto dan were 64 beats long, Yatsuhashi kumiuta used familiar form except dan was 120 beats long. Each note of poem sung in 4 phrases, main type of instrumental koto music called shirabemono, �Rokudan� classic form, main theme with varied material. The most important form of koto composition is jiuta combining techniques from kumiuta and shirabemono, music called tegotomono, tegotomono musical interludes innovation is additional and extension of instrumental transitions occuring between songs of kumiuta-style pieces, simplest form consists of 3 parts. Fore song (maeuta), instrumental interlude (tegoto), after song (atouta). Contemporary jiuta ensemble consists of koto, shamisen, shakuhachi; japanese say the koto is the bone, shamisen is the flesh, and the shakuhachi is the skin of jiuta composition. 20th century repertoire from 3 genres: 17th century kumiuta, danmono, and tegotomono. Kumiuta, cycle of 6 short songs, kumi �short� uta �song�; strict form, 32 measures, 4/4 or 2/4, follow vocal lines closely, instrumental genre. Kumiuta sung and played by one musician, singer and player as one. Danmono 17th century composition writing in sections (dan), each dan is 104 beats long, sections vary; tegotomono 18th century performed by Yamada musicians borrowed from Ikuta traditions.
In Kyushu, koto music was taken into the serene sphere of Buddist and Confucian priests and of noblemen, removed from the popular sphere. A tradition cultivated by a preiest musician. Kenjun(1547-1636) performed in temples but never for popular entertainment. Kenjun�s vocal-instrumental compositions, called kumiuta, reflected the calm, meditative mood of the atmosphere in which they are composed. Traditionally the koto has been played resting on the tatami-mat floor and the player with legs tucked under sitting on a small pillow. As more japanese homes have western furnishings and fewer koto students find it comfortable to sit on their legs, it has become acceptable to rest the koto on a stand and sit in a chair to play.
The music that receives the broadest sup port from the public in general is Japan's own original popular music called kayo kyoku. People enjoy not only listening to kayo-kyoku songs in live concerts and on radio and television, but also singing them to taped orchestral accompaniment in bars or at home. The basic styles of kayo-kyoku were established in the late 1910's through the early 1920's. They were from the musical style of songs originally composed for school education. The scales used in school music and kayo-kyoku are a blending of Western and Japanese scales. Melodies based on those pentatonic scales are often characterized by trills and grace notes which are commonly seen in traditional folk songs and the shamisen music of earlier times. While keeping such basic styles as a major element of kayo-kyoku, its form has been widened under the influence of Western popular songs. In those selections of the new style, melodies are more sophisticated and rhythm is more articulated with a strong beat.
As for the education of professional musicians, the Tokyo Music School (which succeeded the Ongaku-torishirabe-sho and became the Music Department of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1949) was established in 1887. In the second decade of the 20th century, private music schools, the predecessors of the present private universities of music, were founded in major cities such as Tokyo or Osaka. Professional musical education has its roots in the widespread musical education of children at home, and there are many private classes, large and small, for helping such home education. Conspicuous among them are such large-scale musical education systems as Suzuk Shin'ichi's Talent Education Research Institute and the Toho Musical Class.
Christian music had, in fact, been introduced into Japan as early as the mid-16th century with the arrival of Portuguese merchants and Roman Catholic priests. With this importation came Catholic music and Western musical instruments, the most lasting of which was the double-reed shawm, which survives today as the tuneful accessory of itinerant noodle sellers. The bowed rebeca lute may have combined with the Chinese hu-ch'in in the creation of the bowed kokyu of 17th-century Japan. However, the suppression of Christianity in that century destroyed the bamboo organs, choirs of mass singers, and most of the other direct Western musical imitations until the Meiji Restoration. The official doctrine of new religious freedom in 1872 brought large numbers of Protestant missionaries into action, and collections of hymns with Japanese text were printed by 1878. Interdenominational editions were necessary by the 1890s. Since that time, standard Catholic and Protestant musical activities can be found and, with the international growth of Tokyo, one can even add the sounds of synagogues and a mosque. But the growth of musical acculturation in Meiji Japan is better seen in its other foreign imports.
Band music, as part of a military table of organization, had already been tried in Dutch style at a military school in Nagasaki during the early 19th century. After Matthew C. Perry's arrival in 1853, every foreign delegation to Japan did its best to impress the natives with marching bands (Perry added a minstrel show). Thus, the various Japanese regional and national military leaders were quick to add such organizations to their modernized armies. The emperor was equally aware of the Western musical values displayed by the first foreign missions and ordered that the gagaku musicians be trained in band music as well. A navy band from the Satsuma clan gave the first Japanese public performance of this new music at the opening of the railroad in 1872, and in 1876 gagaku musicians made their debut as band musicians on the occasion of the emperor's birthday. The training of the many new ensembles was in the hands of English, French, and German bandmasters, and new music was created by them or by their Japanese students to match the spirit of Meiji modernism. The most famous case is the national anthem, �Kimi ga yo,� which was one of the few successful early attempts at combining Western and Japanese traditions. A British bandmaster, William Fenton, teaching the Japanese navy band, worked together with gagaku musicians through several unsuccessful versions; and the search continued through his German successor, Franz Eckert. A court musician, Hayashi Hiromori (1831�96), is credited with the melody shown in notation XIV, which was given its premiere in 1880 and has remained the national anthem since that time. Hayashi first wrote it in traditional gagaku notation; and Eckert �corrected� it with Western harmonization, noting that it fit in both a gagaku mode (ichikotsu) and one from the Western church tradition (Dorian). As Japan's military prowess grew, standard Western-style marches and patriotic pieces dominated the repertoire. They also influenced popular music with such genres as rappa-bushi (literally, �bugle songs�) as well as music in the schools.
The primary sources of Western tunes were those pieces from Boston schoolbooks that appeared to be pentatonic. Through this method songs like �The Bluebells of Scotland� spoke of beauty (�Utsukushiki�), �Auld Lang Syne� concerned fireflies, and Stephen Foster became the major composer of songs known to educated Japanese children. The newly composed songs with their artificial tunes and moralistic words quickly faded away and eventually were replaced by more popular children's school songs based on military music (gunka) from the Sino- and Russo-Japanese wars. The teacher-training school became the Tokyo School of Music by 1890 and included instruction in koto and, because of the lack of proper violins, the bowed kokyu. The music department of the modern Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music is still located at the spot of the original school in Ueno Park, Tokyo, with a bust of Beethoven beside the entrance. Koto, samisen, no music, and Japanese music history are now found there, along with extensive offerings in Western music. However, until the late 20th century, music education was totally Western in orientation. Japanese music was presented in middle-school music appreciation courses only some 10 years after the end of World War II. The teaching of Western-style singing and the use of choruses have become fundamental to a proper education in Japan, with the results that youth and workers' choruses of the 20th century are cut off from original Japanese music. It was only with the rise all over the world in the mid-20th century of searches for cultural or ethnic identities that the Western nature of Japanese music education has been bypassed by some youth. Such a move should be quite clear to followers of Euro-American folk- and minority-group music revivals. In Japan, 20th-century activists, right or left, have attracted youth by the use of the public-school choral tradition in new textual contexts. Behind the robust volume of such functional, harmonized tunes lies the equally viable if quieter sounds of older, traditional music.
Perhaps the most obvious and successful composer in the new traditional music (shin hogaku) following World War I was Miyagi Michio (1894�1956), a blind koto teacher in the Ikuta school. In 1921 he composed a piece �Ochiba no odori� (�Dance of the Falling Leaves�), which used two koto, samisen, and a 17-stringed bass koto of his invention. Later works by Miyagi combine orchestras of traditional instruments, sometimes with strikingly successful results, although concerti for koto by some composers, with their mass koto and shakuhachi accompaniments, rather negate the entire sound ideal of the original idioms. The 1929 duet for shakuhachi and koto, �Haru no umi� (�Spring Sea�), has proven Baroque-like in its performance practice, for it is often heard played by the violin, with koto or piano accompaniment. Its style equals the French composer Claude Debussy in his most �orientale� moments. The Japanese traditionalist's view of Western music described above continued to be employed after World War II with such works as multimovement pieces using mixed orchestras in other contemporary idioms, including electronic manipulations. Such trends are best seen in the context of Western-style Japanese composers.
It has often been felt that no true combination of Japanese and Western music would be possible until there was some composer who was equally knowledgeable in both Western and Japanese traditional styles. Such a musical, aesthetic barricade seemed unbroken until the last third of the 20th century, when international music styles made culturally transcendental eclecticism a viable medium for those composers with enough talent and insight to control the infinite idioms available to them. In Japan, Takemitsu Toru seems a likely candidate for such an accolade. His music is totally contemporary and never directly �orientale,� yet some of his senses of timing, texture, and structure are characteristically Japanese.
In modern Japan all styles of music are available, from the traditional to the most avant-garde. Fully professional performances of kabuki music are matched by complete Beethoven symphonic series. Huge choruses singing polemics of every type and mass bands of children bowing violins in the widely imitated method of instruction developed by Shinichi Suzuki compete for audiences with intimate recitals of Heike biwa music and hundreds of other events. Research in Japanese traditional music has flourished among native scholars as well as among an increasing number of foreign devotees; and national, private, and academic organizations have been founded for the collection, study, and publication of material dealing with all aspects of Japanese musical life.
From the outline of Japanese musical culture given above, it should be evident that old traditions can still be heard along with the newer ones. For the most part, the older forms probably do not sound the same today as they did in their heyday. Such changes in traditions are inevitable, however, and are common to music in most other world cultures, including the Western. For example, present-day gagaku performances are undoubtedly different from those of 1,000 years ago, but Mozart symphonies as well do not sound the same as they did in the 18th century. Now modern technology has made it possible to �freeze� a given performance of some musical event through a recording. Each musician in each generation may choose as he desires to add fresh flavour to such earlier items or leave them �pure.� Part of the charm and fascination of Japanese music is that it still offers so many stylistic listening and studying choices to anyone curious or energetic enough to want to know them better. A major point of this entire discussion is that none of the various styles of East Asian music is any more mystical or incomprehensible than is Bach or Beethoven. Each tradition is simply different. All of them are also logical and�perhaps of greater importance�they are beautiful to those who learn their special forms of musical language.