Japanese music

Early evidence

Ancient Chinese sources and modern archaeological data provide the earliest surviving insights into Japanese music. Archaeologists have discovered materials of Neolithic people in Japan and pottery remains of the Jōmon culture dating back, according to some scholars, as far as the 11th millennium bce. Among the items recovered from the subsequent Yayoi period (c. 300 bce–c. 250 ce), the most significant musical finds are dōtaku bronze bells. They show that the native population had adopted Chinese metallurgy. The shape of the bells and the locations of their remains indicate that they may have entered the Japanese islands with tribes migrating from northern Asia.

That Japan gradually came to be dominated by one group called the Yamato clan became more evident in the Tumulus period (c. 250–c. 500 ce) and led to the present imperial system. Specific evidence of its musical life is found first in certain tomb figurines (haniwa), which were substitutes for the earlier Asian tradition of human sacrifices at the death of a leader. One haniwa has been found playing a barrel drum with a stick, while another figure is seated with a four- or five-stringed board zither across his lap. Crotal bells (pellet or jingle bells) are found on costumes, and some statues seem to be of singers. The zither is of special interest, for it is related to the Korean kayagŭm that appeared in the Kaya kingdom (on the central southern coast of what is now South Korea) by at least the 6th century. It also may be the earliest example of the wagon, or Yamato-goto, a six-stringed zither with movable bridges found in Japanese Shintō music. The crotal bells survive in the form of the suzu bell tree, an instrument characteristic of Shintō dances only. The interpretation of another figure as a singer and the presence of a drummer are rather too general for conclusions, although a Chinese history book of the 3rd century (Wei zhi, 297 ce) does speak of the natives of Japan as singing and dancing during a funeral. That source also notes two traits well-known in Shintō today: a concern for purification and the use of hand claps in praying before a shrine.

The mention of shamanism is found in Chinese accounts and is of particular interest to those concerned with the northern Asian aspects of Japanese culture. In that context it must be remembered that the Ainu were as populous and strong as the new Japanese people at the time of the founding of the Yamato dynasty. Battles between the Japanese and Ainu are noted in 6th-century Chinese books such as the Song shu (513), and, rather like 19th-century American Indians, Ainu were found as mercenary troops in a group of Japanese forces sent to assist the Korean Silla kingdom in the 7th century. The Chinese Sui shu history book (630) mentions tattooed people like the Ainu as well as a five-stringed zither and a flute. Ainu culture today maintains a jew’s harp—though not a flute—as well as a tonkori zither with two to five strings. It is unlike the zither on the lap of the earlier tomb figure in both its shape and playing position, being held like a banjo and played open-stringed with both hands. The surviving shamanism of the Ainu has equivalent forms in early Shintō and in a few surviving Japanese folk “mountain women” traditions. However, the guttural vocal style and the frequent polyphonic textures of modern Ainu music today seem culturally to point north rather than south or west. Perhaps the Ainu are a living link between present-day civilization and the life pictured in ancient Chinese documents.

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As the Japanese people gradually drove the Ainu northward, they solidified their own internal structure and established stronger ties with continental culture. Records show that a Korean Silla (in Japanese, Shiragi) emperor sent 80 musicians to the funeral of a Japanese ruler in 453. Chinese Buddhism was officially introduced as a religion in Japan in the 6th century, selected converts being sent to China for proper training in the rituals (hence the music) of that faith. A Korean musician, Mimaji (in Japanese, Mimashi), is believed to have introduced masked dances and entertainments (gigaku) and southern Chinese music (kuregaku) into the Japanese court in 612. By the 8th century Japan had produced its own first written chronicles, the Kojiki (713; “Records of Ancient Matters”) and the Nihon shoki (720; “Chronicles of Japan”), which recount the origin of music in Japanese mythology as the form of an entertainment used by the gods to tempt the sun goddess, Amaterasu, out of her hiding in a cave. Indirect references to music appear in semihistorical accounts of early court activities in the books. In addition, the Nihon shoki contains the texts of some 200 poems, many of which seem to have been derived from the oral musical tradition.