2. 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
Biwagaku:
Music played with the Biwa, a kind of guitar with
four strings
Japan Traditional music

3. Nohgaku:
Music played during Noh performances. It basically
consists of a chorus, the Hayashi flute, theTsuzumi
drum, and other instruments.
Minyo:
Japanese folk songs
Sokyoku:
Music played with the Koto, a type of zither with 13
strings. Later also accompanied
byShamisen and Shakuhachi.
Japan Traditional music

4. 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

5. Japan Traditional music

6. 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

7. The biwa is used in Gagaku
and in the period of the
imperial court, also was a
Biwa 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.
Japan Folk Instruments

8. 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.
Japan Folk Instruments

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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.
Japan Folk Instruments

13. 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 Instruments

14. Kabuki
Kabuki (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

15. Gagaku
Gagaku (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 Music
Kumeuta (久米歌?)
Kagurauta (神楽歌?)
Azumaasobi (東遊び?)
Saibara (催馬楽?)
Rōei (朗詠?)
Japan Folk mUSIC

16. Noh ( 能?) or nōgaku (能楽?) is another type of
theatrical music. Noh music is played by
noh the hayashi-kata (囃子方 ?). The instruments
used are the taiko ( 太 鼓 ?), ōtsuzumi
鼓?), kotsuzumi (小鼓?), and fue (笛?).
(大
is kind of Buddhist song which is an
Shōmyō
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.
is music using the shamisen. There are three
Nagauta styles of nagauta: one for kabuki dance,
one for kabuki dialogue, and one of music
unconnected with kabuki.
began in the Edo period. Buddhist monks
Shakuhachi played the shakuhachi as a substitute for a
sutra. Sometimes the shakuhachi is played
along with other instruments.
Japan Folk mUSIC

17. Sōkyoku
Sōkyoku ( 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 Folk mUSIC

18. 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 PAINTers

19. Landscape
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.
Japan PAINTings

20. 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.
Japan PAINTers

21. Hokusai's The
Wave
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.
Japan PAINTings

22. 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.
Japan PAINTers

23. Chinese Lions
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.
Japan PAINTings

24. 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 PAINTers

25. Irises
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.
Japan PAINTings

26. 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.
Japan PAINTers

27. Sesshu's
Falcons
and
Herons
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.
Japan PAINTings

28. Tori Busshi late 6th to early 7th centuries
. 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)
Enkū
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.
Jōchō d. 1057
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

29. Kaikei mid-to-late 12th century
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.
Yoshitaka Amano late 12th century
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.
Unkei 1151–1223
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 sculptors

30. 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.
Japan Sculptures

31. 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

32. 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 Sculptures

33. 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 . TRADITIONA L JAPANE SE
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

34. Japan Embroidery

35. Japan Embroidery