All About Lily Chou-Chou. This is the tie-in album for the film’s fictional singer. After the film, the artist continued to be known by the name Salyu. I happened to recieve her first Salyu album, Landmark when it was sent to me for free along with another purchase. 

こきゅう

2. knack; trick; secret (of doing something)

The istruments stemming from Oiran-tradition that is still taught in Miyagawacho are the koto and the kokyū, the biwa is not taught there. They all are, however, still studied by Tayū today. Miyagawacho is the only kagai in Japan that still teaches the kokyū.

The Oiran and the Tayūstudied and the latter still studied, the arts of the nobility, which include but are not limited to koto and biwa, while the Geisha studied and still study the arts of the common people, which include but are not limited to nagauta, shamisen and kabuki.

As for who teaches the Geiko and Maiko of Miyagawacho in the playing of the koto, I’m not sure, and I also don’t know if they are the same teachers who teach the koto to the Tayūor who the Tayūlearn it from. Maybe someone else can answer this question, I’m not very well-versed in that area.

The koto is often called the “Japanese harp” in the west, as the sound and construction are somewhat comparable. The koto belongs to the zithers, which are stringed instruments consisting of one or several strings stretched over the instrument’s body, which also functions as a soundbox, or has a soundbox attached to it. Usually, the word zither is used to refer to three specific groups of instruments, the chord, concert and alpine zithers, which can be found in Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, France, north-western Croatio, southern Germany and generally alpine Europe.

The koto is based on the Chinese guzheng and is an important part of traditional Japanese court music, called gagaku. It was introduced to Japan from China during the Nara-period (710-793) and soon started gaining popularity. It was already mentioned in the Genji Monogatari, which was written in the late 10th or early 11th century and is widely regarded as the oldest fictional novel of the world, due to its high popularity amongst members of the nobility.

The average koto is 1,80 meters wide and 25 centimeters wide, hollow and made of paulownia wood. The 13 strings were traditionally made of silk, but today they are usually made of nylon or teflon, because they last longer and almost sound the same.

The instrument’s body is curved upwards, has two sound-holes and two small bridges over which the 13 strings are stretched. All strings have the same tautness to them and are stretched over 13 moveable bridges called ji. By moving the ji, the different sounds can be adjusted or changed while playing. The ji used to be made of rose wood or even ivory, but today, usually several kinds of plastic are used.

For each part of the koto, there is a mythological description, where the koto is compared to a dragon. The upper back of the koto is the “dragon’s shell” (竜甲, ryūko), the lower part is the “dragon’s stomach” (竜腹, ryūhara), the back part is the “dragon’s tail”(竜尾, ryūbi), the front bridge the “dragon’s horns” (竜角, ryūkaku) and the rear bridge “the seat of the angels/cloud horns” (雲角, kumokaku), alluding to the clouds above the dragon’s horns.

The koto is played either kneeling at the ground or sitting using wooden legs. The strings are plucked using the right hand sitting at the right end using claw-like plectrums called “tsume” (爪, “claw”, “fingernail”) that are worn like rings on the fingers. Tsume are can be made several materials, for example of ivory with rings made of bamboo, but alo completely made of plastic. The left hand can be used to make sound-effects, pluck strings or lower the sounds by a half or one full note by pressing the strings down.

There are two main koto-schools, the Ikuta and the Yamada School. They use different plectrums - the Yamada School uses fingernail-like plectrums and the Ikuta School uses square plectrums - and there are differences in the way of playing, and the Ikuta School focuses on vocal accompaniment to the playing of the koto.

Instruments related to the koto are the Chinese guzheng, the Korean gayageum, the Vietnamese đàn tranh and the Mongolian yatga. One of the most famous pieces composed for the koto is Rokudan No Shirabe, composed byYatsuhashi Kengyō. You can listen to it here.

The kokyū is a traditional Japanese string-instrument, but the only one played with a bow. It was introduced to Japan from China in the 17th century, but the sound, shape and cosntruction are unique to Japan. The kokyū has a uniquely Okinawan version called thekūchō (胡弓 くーちょー)in the Okinawan language. The kokyūis often called “the Japanese violin” in the west, as both of these instruments are played using a bow.

The kokyū looks quite similar to the shamisen, at first sight, it looks like a smaller version of the shamisen. It’s 70 centimeters tall, and its neck is made of ebony, its hollow body is made of coconut or styrax japonica wood and is covered on both ends with catskin (the kūchō is covered with snakesin). It has three, or sometimes four, strings and is played upright while kneeling with a horsetail-strung bow.

The kokyū used to be an important part of the sankyoku ensemble, consisting koto, shamisen and kokyū, that was the most popular in central Japan, but since the 20th century the kokyūhas often been replaced by the shakuhachi.

Shinei Matayoshi, a kokyūand sanshin (the Okinawan predecessor of the shamisen) musician and sanshin maker, invented a four-stringed version of the kokyūto expand its range, it has become much more popular again.

The kokyū is similar to two Chinese lutes that are also played with a bow: The leiqin and the zhuihu. In Japanese, the term kokyū can refer to any Asian string instrument played with a bow, as does the Chinese term huqin. That’s why the Chinese erhu, which is also used by some performers in Japan, is sometimes called a kokyū, along with the kūchō, leiqin, and zhuihu. The specific Japanese name for erhu is niko.

Here you can listen to th song “Kurokami“ being performed by a shamisen-player and a kokyū-player.

The biwa (琵琶) is a short-necked, fretted lute that came to Japan from China in the 7th century and has its origins in the Chinese instrument pipa. They usually have four strings, but the modernsatsuma and chikuzen biwas can also have five strings. There are more than 7 types of biwa. The biwa is the instrument of Benzaiten/Benten (弁才天, 弁財天), a Bhuddist goddess, who originated from the Hindu goddess Saraswati. She is thegoddess of music, eloquence, poetry, and education inShinto.

The type of biwa that was developed in the the 7th century is called gaku-biwa and is used in gagaku, traditional Japanese court music. It’s also the most common and well-known type of biwa.

Through an unknown route, another type of biwa found its way to the Kyushu region around the same time, and this thin biwa (called mōsō-biwa or kōjin-biwa) was used in ceremonies and religious rites.

Then, as the Ritsuryō state collapsed, the court music musicians playing the gaku-biwa were faced with the reconstruction of the country and sought asylum in Buddhist temples. There, they became Buddhist monks and encountered the mōsō-biwa. They incorporated the convenient aspects of mōsō-biwa, mostly its small size and portability, into their large and heavy gaku-biwa, and created the heike-biwa, which was used primarily for recitations of The Tale of the Heike.It kept the rounded shape of the gaku-biwa and was played with a large plectrum like the mōsō-biwa. As said above, the heike-biwa was also small, like the mōsō-biwa and was used for similar purposes.

Through the next several centuries, players of both instrumentsintersected often and developed new music styles and new types of biwa. By the Kamakura period (1185–1333), the heike-biwa had become a popular instrument.

The modern satsuma-biwa and chikuzen-biwa both originated in mōsō-biwa, but the Satsuma biwa was used for moral and mental training by samurai of the Satsuma Domain during the Warring States period, and later in general performances. The Chikuzen biwa was used by Buddhist monks visiting private residences to perform memorial services, but also for telling entertaining stories and news while accompanying themselves on the biwa, and this form of storytelling was thought to be spread in this way. This is why the biwa’s most popular use today is still to accompany narrative storytelling.

There wasn’t much written about the biwa from the 16th century to the mid-19th century. It is known, however, that three main streams of biwa emerged during that time: zato (the lowest level of the state-controlled guild of blind biwa players), shifu (samurai style), and chofu (urban style). These styles called biwa-uta (琵琶歌, vocalization with biwa accompaniment) formed the foundation for edo-uta styles (江戸歌) like shinnai and kota.

From these styles also emerged the two main survivors of the biwa tradition: satsuma-biwa and chikuzen-biwa, which are still the most popular kind of biwa today. From the Meiji Era (1868–1912) until the Pacific War, the satsuma-biwa and chikuzen-biwa were popular across Japan, and at the beginning of the Showa Era (1925–1989), the nishiki-biwa was created and gained popularity. Of the remaining biwa traditions, only higo-biwa remains a style almost exclusively performed by blind people. The higo-biwa is closely related to the heike-biwa and mainly relies on an oral-narrative tradition focusing on wars and legends.

Here’s a list of the types of biwa, which differ in their number of strings, sounds it can produce and plectrums they are played with:

The Gagaku-biwa (雅楽琵琶) or Gaku-biwa (楽琵琶): The most common and widely known biwa to this day. It’s large and heavy with four strings and four frets and is used exclusively for gagaku. The plectrum used with it is small and thin, often rounded, and made from a hard material such as boxwood or even ivory. It is not used to accompany singing. It’s played held on its side, similar to a guitar, and the player sits cross-legged.

Gogen-biwa (五絃琵琶): This type of biwa was used for gagaku, but was removed with the reforms and standardizations made to the court orchestra during the late 10th Century, and died out around the same time. It also disappeared in Chinese court orchestras. Recently, this instrument has been revived for historically informed performances and historical reconstructions.

Mōsō-biwa (盲僧琵琶): This biwa has four strings and is used to play Buddhist mantra and songs. Its shape is similar to the chikuzen-biwa, but with a much more narrow body. Its plectrum varies in both size and materials.

The gaku-biwa, gogen-biwa andmōsō-biwa are summarized as the classic biwa.

Heike-biwa (平家琵琶): This biwa has four strings and five frets and is used almost exclusively to recite the Heike Monogatari. Its plectrum is slightly larger than that of the gagaku-biwa, but the instrument itself is much smaller. It was originally used by traveling biwa minstrels, as its small size made it practical for indoor play and traveling.

Satsuma-biwa (薩摩琵琶): A biwa with four strings and four frets made popular during the Edo Period in Kagoshima (which used to be Satsuma province hence the name) by Shimazu Nisshinsai. The frets of the Satsuma biwa are raised 4 centimeters from the neck allowing notes to be bent several steps higher, each one producing the instrument’s characteristic sawari, or buzzing drone sound. It’s played using a boxwood plectrum that is much wider than that of most others biwa, often reaching widths of 25 cm or more. Its size and construction influences the sound of the instrument as the curved body is often struck percussively with the plectrum during play. It’s usually made from Japanese mulberry, although other hard woods like Japanese zelkova are sometimes also used.The most famous 20th century performer was Tsuruta Kinshi, who developed her own version of the instrument, which she called the tsuruta-biwa. This biwa often has five strings (although it is essentially a 4-string instrument, because the 5th string is a doubled 4th and they are always played together) and five or more frets, and the construction of the tuning head and frets vary slightly. Ueda Junko and Tanaka Yukio, two of Tsuruta Kinshi’s students, continue the tradition of the modern Satsuma biwa.

The Heike-biwa and the Satsuma-biwa are summarized as the Edo-biwa.

Chikuzen-biwa (筑前琵琶): This biwa has four strings and four frets or five strings and five frets and was made popular in the Meiji Period by Tachibana Satosada. Today, most performers use the five string version. The plectrum it’s played with is usually made from rosewood with boxwood or ivory tips for plucking the strings and is much smaller than that of the Satsuma biwa, usually about 1 cm in width, although its size, shape, and weight depends on the sex of the player, as does the instrument’s size itself. Male players use slightly wider and/or longer chikuzen-biwas than those used by females or children. The body of the instrument is not struck with the plectrum during play, and the five string instrument is played upright, but the four-stringed one is played held on its side. The instrument is tuned to match the key of the singer. Asahikai and Tachibanakai are the two major schools of the chikuzen-biwa. It’s popularly used by female biwa players such as Uehara Mari.

Nishiki-biwa (錦琵琶):  A modern biwa with five strings and five frets popularized by Suitō Kinjō. The plectrum used with it is the same as the one used for the Satsuma biwa.

Although the biwa used to very popular for many hundreds of years, it was almost completely lost due to war and the ban of Todo, one of the instrument’s main group of patrons, and the rapid industrialization, modernization and westernization during the Meiji Period, and many biwa-schools and even entire types of biwa almost died out completely. Luckily, the biwa is being revived through both modern and traditional Japanese musicians.

Here you can listen to biwa-player Yoko Hiraoka playing “Gion Shojo” on the Chikuzen-biwa while also singing.

2014/インスタレーション

4m×4mの地面が、ゆっくりと上下にうごくインスタレーション作品