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Japan Traditional music

There are several types of traditional, Japanese music (hogaku). Some of the most important ones are listed below:

Gagaku: ancient imperial court music and, lit. "elegant music") is a type of Japanese classical music that has been performed at the Imperial Court in Kyoto for several centuries

Music played with the Biwa, a kind of guitar with four strings

Biwagaku: 

Japan Traditional music

Music played during Noh performances. It basically consists of a chorus, the Hayashi flute, theTsuzumi drum, and other instruments.

Nohgaku:

Sokyoku: Music played with the Koto, a type of zither with 13 strings. Later also accompanied byShamisen and Shakuhachi.

Minyo: Japanese folk songs

Japan Traditional music

Shamisenongaku: 

Music played with the Shamisen, a kind of guitar with only three strings. Kabuki and Bunraku performances are accompanied by the shamisen.

Shakuhachi: Music played with the Shakuhachi, a bamboo flute that is about 55 cm long. The name of the flute is its length expressed in shaku an old Japanese unit of length.

Japan Traditional music

Japan Folk Instruments

The koto is probably the most familiar Japanese instrument in the world. In ancient tradition, a kind of koto is used as the symbol of music, one of the attributes of a scholar in the Chinese Confucian tradition. Although the koto is used in Gagaku and some of the pieces for solo koto are very old, most of its development was in the Edo period and there is also a broad range of modern music for the koto

Japan Folk Instruments

The biwa is used in Gagaku and in the period of the imperial court, also was a solo instrument, as can be seen in the pictures illustrating the Tale of Genji. But this solo repertory, elegant pieces transmitted from China, has vanished, leaving only legends behind. In the medieval period, simple biwas were used by blind priests telling stories from the Tales of the Heike about the battles between the Genji and Heike clans.

Biwa

Japan Folk Instruments

The shamisen is a remodeled version of the snake-skin covered sanshin or jabisen which came to Japan from the Ryukyu islands in the Muromachi period. In ancient Egypt there was a three-string skin-covered instrument called the "nefer" or "nofer." This developed into the three-string setaru in Persia (present day Iran). In the language of Iran, "se" means "three" and "taru" means "strings," making the meaning the same as the word "sanshin." In Yuan dynasty China, a snake-skin covered three-string instrument was developed and around 1390, this instrument was introduced into the Ryukyu kingdom from China. This was during the Ming dynasty.Shamisen

Japan Folk Instruments

There are two basic kinds of flutes, the transverse flute where the instrument is held to the side and the player blows into the side of the flute. The gakubue, komabue, ryuteki, Noh kan and shinobue are all examples of transverse flute. The other kind of flute is held vertically and the player blows into the end. The shakuhachi and hichiriki are examples of this type of flute (although the hichiriku is actually more of a reed instrument than a flute).

Japan Folk Instruments

The shakuhachi is made from a length of bamboo 3.5 to 4.0 cm. in diameter cut close to the root with seven nodes. The first node is close to the root and is the bottom of the instrument, while the instrument is blown from the upper end at the seventh node. The standard length is "isshaku hassun (one shaku, eight sun)" or 54.5 cm., which gives the instrument the name of "shakuhachi." However, just like the shinobue, often the shakuhachi has to play at the pitch of singing or the shamisen and so, now there are several different lengths of shakuhachi ranging from 75.8 cm. to 36.8 cm.

Japan Folk Instruments

Another very distinctive sound of Gagaku is the harmonica-like sho, which provides a kind of cloud of sound. The shape of the instrument is supposed to suggest the mythical bird, the phoenix. The sound is said to express the feeling of light shining from the heavens. The sho is used in instrumental music and dances of the left and usually plays chords to provide harmony, a technique called "aitake (combined bamboo).

Japan Folk Instruments

Properly speaking, this drum is called Sarugaku taiko, and is widely used in Noh, Nagauta and Kagura. This drum entered Japan with Gigaku from the Korean kingdom of Kudara long ago in the Asuka period. Then it was used in Dengaku and Sarugaku and then underwent various changes with the beginning of Noh and became an essential part of the Noh ensemble. In the Edo period, together with the other instruments of the Noh flute and percussion ensemble, it became an important part of Nagauta and other popular music forms. It is only used in some Noh plays, but when it is used, it only is played in the climactic final half of the play to create an exciting effect.

Sarugaku taiko

Japan Folk Instruments

The kotsuzumi is used in Noh, the flute and percussion ensemble of Nagauta, the background music of Kabuki and a variety of folk entertainments. It is an altered version of the kakko used in Gagaku and at the end of the Heian period was used by the female court dancers called shirabyoshi. It then was used in Sarugaku together with the taiko and then became a standard part of the Noh ensemble in the Muromachi period. The standard Noh ensemble includes kotsuzumi, okawa, shimedaiko and the Noh kan.

Japan Folk mUSIC

KabukiKabuki (歌舞伎 ?) is a type of Japanese theatre. The music of kabuki can be divided into three parts:

•Gidayubushi – largely identical to jōruri.•Shimoza ongaku – music is played in kuromisu, the lower seats below the stage.•Debayashi – incidental music, played on the Kabuki stage; also known as degatari.

Japan Folk mUSIC

GagakuGagaku (雅楽 ?) is court music, and is the oldest traditional music in Japan. Gagaku music includes songs, dances, and a mixture of other Asian music. Gagaku has two styles; these are instrumental music kigaku (器楽 ?)and vocal music seigaku (声楽 ?).Instrumental Music

Kangen (管弦 ?) - basically, a Chinese form of music.Bugaku (舞楽 ?) - influenced by Tang Dynasty China and Balhae.[1]

Vocal MusicKumeuta (久米歌 ?)Kagurauta (神楽歌 ?)Azumaasobi (東遊び ?)Saibara (催馬楽 ?)Rōei (朗詠 ?)

Japan Folk mUSIC

Noh (  能 ?) or nōgaku ( 能楽 ?) is another type of theatrical music. Noh music is played by the hayashi-kata ( 囃 子 方 ?). The instruments used are the taiko ( 太鼓 ?), ōtsuzumi  ( 大鼓 ?

), kotsuzumi  (小鼓 ?), and fue (笛 ?).noh

 Shōmyō is kind of Buddhist song which is an added melody for a sutra. Shōmyō came from India, and it began in Japan in the Nara period. Shōmyō is sung a capella by one or more Buddhist monks.

Nagauta is music using the shamisen. There are three styles of nagauta: one for kabuki dance, one for kabuki dialogue, and one of music unconnected with kabuki.

Shakuhachibegan in the Edo period. Buddhist monks played the shakuhachi as a substitute for a sutra. Sometimes the shakuhachi is played along with other instruments.

Japan Folk mUSIC

SōkyokuSōkyoku ( 筝 曲 ?) uses the "Chinese koto"

(guzheng), which differs from the Japanese koto ( 琴 ?). There are two schools of sōkyoku.

•Ikuta ryu - Originated in Eastern Japan. It is played with shamisen.•Yamada ryu - Originated in Western Japan. It is focused on songs.

Japan PAINTers

Buson (1716-1784), Japanese painter and haiku poet of the Edo period (1603-1867), also known as Yosa Buson. He was born in a suburb of Ōsaka, Japan, and apparently lost both parents while he was still young. In 1737 he moved to Edo (now Tokyo) to study painting and haiku poetry in the tradition of Bashō, a Japanese master of haiku. After the death of one of his poetry teachers in 1742, he toured northern areas associated with Bashō and visited western Japan, finally settling in Kyōto, Japan, in 1751. Particularly active as a painter between 1756 and 1765, Buson gradually returned to haiku, leading a movement to return to the purity of Bashō's style and to purge haiku of superficial wit. He married about 1760. In 1771 he painted a famous set of ten screens with his great contemporary Ike no Taiga, demonstrating his status as one of the finest painters of his time.

Japan PAINTings

Eighteenth-century Japanese artist Buson was also a renowned Haiku (a form of Japanese verse) poet. This landscape, completed in 1771, is in the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne, Germany.

Landscape

Japan

Hokusai, full name Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), Japanese painter and wood engraver, born in Edo (now Tokyo). He is considered one of the outstanding figures of the Ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world” (everyday life), school of printmaking. Hokusai entered the studio of his countryman Katsukawa Shunsho in 1775 and there learned the new, popular technique of woodcut printmaking. Between 1796 and 1802 he produced a vast number of book illustrations and color prints, perhaps as many as 30,000, that drew their inspiration from the traditions, legends, and lives of the Japanese people. Hokusai's most typical wood-block prints, silkscreens, and landscape paintings were done between 1830 and 1840. The free curved lines characteristic of his style gradually developed into a series of spirals that imparted the utmost freedom and grace to his work, as in Raiden, the Spirit of Thunder.

PAINTers

Japan PAINTings

Among the thousands of prints made during his prolific career, the Japanese artist Hokusai created a famous series of prints, entitled Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, from about 1826 to 1833. These prints express a range of moods from serenity to intense drama. Included in this series, The Breaking Wave Off Kanagawa, or, more simply, The Wave, portrays a scene in which a large wave dwarfs Mount Fuji, seen in the background, while it threatens to destroy the boats beneath it. Hokusai’s work includes some of the finest examples of Japanese landscape printmaking.

Hokusai's The Wave

Japan

Kanō Eitoku (1543-1590), influential Japanese artist, the first great master of the Momoyama period (1568-1600) in Japanese history (see Japanese Art and Architecture: Momoyama Art). Born into the already well-known Kano dynasty of painters, Eitoku was trained in the family's heritage of techniques. His early style showed mastery of traditional monochrome ink-painting, as in his Pine and Crane (1566) at Daitokuji Temple in Kyōto, Japan. At this time he also learned to fill and articulate large areas of wall space. For Oda Nobunaga and other warlord patrons of the turbulent Momoyama period, Eitoku originated a style that typified the brash vigor of the age, using colorful, sharply outlined forms on flat gold backgrounds. These brilliant, heroically proportioned designs served to illuminate the dark interiors of the warlords' vast castles; however, much of Eitoku's work perished when these castles were later destroyed. His great decorative cycle for Nobunaga's Azuchi Castle in Azuchi province was destroyed along with the castle soon after Nobunaga's death in 1582.

PAINTers

Japan PAINTings

Kanō Eitoku was one of the most influential Japanese painters of the late 16th century. His work was frequently in demand by the important warlords of the period, including Oda Nobunaga, who commissioned Eitoku to do many of the interior paintings for Azuchi Castle. These paintings were lost after the destruction of the castle in 1582. Chinese Lions is one of Eitoku’s few surviving works.

Chinese Lions

Japan PAINTers

Kōrin, full name Ogata Kōrin (1659-1716), Japanese artist, the greatest painter of the 17th- and 18th-century decorative school. Born into a family of painters, he is thought to have studied with the famous Kano school of art masters. He became especially noted for his paintings of flowers, animals, and landscapes, which attained an elegance and stylized grace unsurpassed in Japanese art. Kōrin's best-known works, his two sixfold Irises screens (Nezu Art Museum, Tokyo), shimmer with blue flowers and green leaves against a gold-leaf background. His ink strokes and lines were often daringly spare, but his color was highly complex, achieving infinite gradations of iridescent shadings; he often mixed ink and gouache directly on the paper to create spontaneous and unexpected effects. Kōrin's masterpiece, the pair of twofold screens, White and Red Prunus in the Spring (National Museum, Tokyo), shows two stylized trees arching over a sinuously drawn stream; the swirling pattern of the stream directly inspired the famous “whiplash” line in late-19th-century art nouveau in Europe.

Japan PAINTings

Ogata Kōrin’s Irises, painted on screens in 1701, is probably his most famous work. The minimal use of line is combined with sophisticated color on a gold-leaf background to create a style unmatched in other Japanese art. This screen is in the Nezu Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan.

Irises

Japan

Sesshū (1420-1506), Japanese painter and Buddhist priest of the Zen sect, considered one of the foremost figures in Japanese art (see Japanese Art and Architecture: Muromachi Art). He was born in the Bitchū region (now part of Okayama Prefecture). Sesshū studied under the great painter and Zen priest Shūbun in Kyōto. About 1464 he moved to Yamaguchi, where he worked at the Unkokuan studio. In 1467 Sesshū visited China, living at the imperial court in Beijing. He was only slightly influenced by the art styles of the contemporary Ming dynasty (1368-1644), modeling his work instead on the landscape painting of the Song dynasty (960-1279). In 1469 he returned to Japan. Several years later he opened his own studio in Yamaguchi.

PAINTers

Japan PAINTings

Japanese artist Sesshū, also a Zen Buddhist priest, painted Falcons and Herons in the 15th century. He is one of the most important artists of the Muromachi period of Japanese art (1338–1573). While studying in China, Sesshū was influenced by the use of monochromatic coloring, a technique demonstrated in Falcons and Herons. An adept of the Chinese Ma-Xia (Ma-Hsia) style of landscape painting, his work emphasized delicate landscape compositions and spontaneous brushwork.

Sesshu's Falcons and Herons

Japan sculptors

Tori Busshi late 6th to early 7th centuries

Enkū

Jōchō d. 1057

. He was from the Kuratsukuri (鞍作 , "saddle-maker") clan, and his full title was Shiba no Kuratsukuri-be no Obito Tori Busshi (司馬鞍作部首止利仏師 )

he wandered all over Japan, helping the poor along the way. During his travels, he carved some 120,000 wooden statues of the Buddha. No two were alike.

He popularized the yosegi technique of sculpting a single figure out of many pieces of wood, and he redefined the canon used to create Buddhist imagery. His style spread across Japan and defined Japanese sculpture for the next 150 years.

Japan sculptors

Kaikei

Yoshitaka Amano

Unkei

mid-to-late 12th century

late 12th century

1151–1223

his style is called Anna-miyō (Anna style) and is known to be intelligent, pictorial and delicate. Most of his works have a height of about three shaku, and there are many of his works in existence.

 is a Japanese artist, character designer, illustrator and a theatre and film scenic designer and costume designer. He first came into prominence in the late 1960s working on the anime adaptation of Speed Racer.

 He specialized in statues of the Buddha and other important Buddhist figures. Unkei's early works are fairly traditional, similar in style to pieces by his father, Kōkei.

Japan

he sculpture of Japan started from the clay figure. Japanese sculpture received the influence of the Silk Road culture in the 5th century, and received a strong influence from Chinese sculpture afterwards. The influence of the Western world was received since the Meiji era. The sculptures were made at local shops, used for sculpting and painting. Most sculptures were found at areas in front of houses and along walls of important buildings.

Sculptures

Japan Sculptures

 is a Buddhist temple complex located in the city of Nara, Japan. Its Great Buddha Hall (大仏殿 Daibutsuden), houses the world's largest bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana, known in Japanese simply as Daibutsu . The temple also serves as the Japanese headquarters of the Kegon school of Buddhism. The temple is a listed UNESCO World Heritage Site as "Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara", together with seven other sites including temples, shrines and places in the city of Nara.

Japan Sculptures

are two wrath-filled and muscular guardians of the Buddha, standing today at the entrance of many Buddhist temples all across Asia including China, Japan and Korea in the form of frightening wrestler-like statues. They are manifestations of the Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi protector deity and the oldest and most powerful of the Mahayana pantheon.

is a Buddhist temple in the city of Uji in Kyoto Prefecture,Japan. It is jointly a temple of the Jōdo-shū (Pure Land) and Tendai-shū sects.

Japan Embroidery

TRADITIONAL JAPANESE EMBROIDERY is taken from the Kimono and from costumes of Kabuki and No drama. The work itself is a discipline and most likely will be different from any you have experienced before. The method of framing up, the procedure, and working order in the class will all be a new embroidery experience. The 46 techniques learnt over 9 phases will give the Embroiderer a foundation for working with the beautiful Silk Fabrics, Flat Silks & Metal Threads. TRADITIONAL JAPANESE EMBROIDERY is taken from the Kimono and from costumes of Kabuki and No drama. The work itself is a discipline and most likely will be different from any you have experienced before. The method of framing up, the procedure, and working order in the class will all be a new embroidery experience. The 46 techniques learnt over 9 phases will give the Embroiderer a foundation for working with the beautiful Silk Fabrics & Metal Threads.

Japan Embroidery

Japan Embroidery