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May 4, 2021 · What are the key genres and instruments in traditional Japanese music? We look at everything from Japanese folk to kabuki, and from the shamisen to taiko drums.
Japanese traditional dance describes a number of Japanese dance styles with a long history and prescribed method of performance. Some of the oldest forms of traditional Japanese dance may be among those transmitted through the kagura tradition, or folk dances relating to food producing activities such as planting rice ( dengaku ) and fishing ...
Dec 19, 2023 · Kyoto’s traditional music and dance performances offer a captivating glimpse into Japan’s rich cultural heritage. From the mesmerizing melodies of the koto and shamisen to the graceful movements of the geisha and maiko, these performances transport audiences to a bygone era.
Noh is one of the most Japanese of performing arts and has exerted a powerful influence on Bunraku, Kabuki, traditional Okinawan dance, and other later forms. Kyogen is performed on the same kind of stage as Noh and is a theatrical art with a strongly comic tone.
- Overview
- Formative period
- 7th to 16th centuries
Japanese performing arts, the varied and technically complex dance and theatre arts of Japan. Among the most important of these are Noh theatre or dance drama, Kabuki, and Bunraku.
From prehistoric times, dances have served as an intermediary between humans and the gods in Japan. Kagura dances dedicated to native deities and performed at the imperial court or in villages before local Shintō shrines are in essence a symbolic reenactment of the propitiatory dance that lured the sun goddess Amaterasu from the cave in ancient myt...
A massive influx into Japan of Chinese and Korean arts and culture occurred between the 6th and the 10th centuries. A Korean performer, Mimaji (Mimashi in Japanese), is credited with having brought the Buddhist gigaku processional dance play to the Japanese court in 612. Mimashi established an official school to train Japanese dancers and musicians in gigaku. Other Korean and Chinese performers from Paekche and Koguryŏ were invited in following years. Gigaku masks cover the entire head (as do Korean folk masks today). Carved of wood and painted with lacquer, the 223 masks that remain (most in the Shōsō Repository in Nara) date back to as early as the 7th century. They are superb examples of the art of mask making, strong-featured and beautifully conceived. From a description of a 13th-century performance, gigaku apparently consisted of a succession of scenes enacted as characters passed by. Masks characterized an Aryan-featured dignitary called Baramon (or Brahman, indicating Indian origin), a fierce wrestler, a Buddhist monk, a princess of the state of Wu in China, a bully, a wistful old man, and others. Some scenes were serious, others were earthy slapstick.
Bugaku court dances introduced from Korea also were patronized by the court. They supplanted gigaku as official court entertainment, and gigaku disappeared as a performing art by the 12th century. It was the custom to have performers of bugaku enter from dressing rooms to the right and the left of the raised platform stage: “right” dances, costumed in orange or red, were those from India, Central Asia, or China proper; “left” dances, costumed in blue-green, were those from Korea and Manchuria. Bugaku is usually performed by groups of four, six, or eight male dancers who move in deliberate, stately steps, repeating movements in the four cardinal directions. Musical accompaniment is by drums, bells, flute, lute, and shō (panpipe). A composition consists of three sections: introduction, development, or “scattering,” and speeding up (jo-ha-kyū). Japanese performers and courtiers created new compositions within the old style in the 10th and 11th centuries. Still, bugaku represents a remarkable preservation of ancient Chinese, Indian, and Korean music and dance that have long since disappeared in their countries of origin. Bugaku has been performed by musicians attached to the imperial court and to major Shintō shrines from the 7th century without break to the present day.
Juggling, acrobatics, ropedancing, buffoonery, and puppetry—the “hundred entertainments” of China and called sangaku, “variety arts,” in Japan—became widely popular as well. During the Heian period (794–1185) professional troupes, ostensibly attached to temples and shrines to draw crowds for festival days, combined these lively stage arts, now called sarugaku (literally, monkey or mimic music), with dancing to drums from dengaku and began to perform short plays consisting of alternate sections of dialogue, mimicry, singing, and dancing. Sometime in the 14th century a sarugaku actor from Nara named Kan’ami incorporated in his plays a chanted dance (kuse-mai or kōwaka-mai), for the first time creating the possibility of dramatic dance that could carry forward a story. This fusion of dance, drama, and song, which soon came to be known as sarugaku-no-nō, or simply Noh (nō), marked a revolutionary advance in Japanese theatrical art. Kan’ami’s son, Zeami, refined the style of performance, composed 50 or more of the finest Noh plays in the repertoire, and wrote fundamental treatises on the art of acting and dramaturgy.
When Zeami was 11, the military ruler of Japan, the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, saw him perform, became enamoured of the boy’s beauty, and took him into his residence in Kyōto as a companion. For most of his life, Zeami benefited from the patronage and the refined audiences that stemmed from this circumstance. The sarugaku troupe that Kan’ami and, later, Zeami headed was one of four in Nara; the others soon adopted the changes in performing style and the plays created by father and son.
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- James R. Brandon
Jan 14, 2020 · A guide to the types of dances that can be found within Japan. From the traditional ritual dances of Kagura and Bon Odori that are steeped in Japanese mythology to modern ballet or Asakusa's carnival famous for samba - if you are a lover of dance, Japan has you covered.
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Within this framework, there are three types of traditional music in Japan: theatrical, court music, and instrumental. Theatrical. Japan has several theatrical forms of drama in which music plays a significant role. The main forms are kabuki and Noh. Noh (能) or nōgaku (能楽) music is a type of theatrical music used in Noh theatre.
