GOTTAN: Japanese musical instrument
http://worldhitz4u.blogspot.com/2014/03/gottan-japanese-musical-instrument.html
The gottan is a traditional three-stringed plucked musical
instrument from Japan. The musical instrument is normally seen either as a
relative or derivative of the sanshin, itself relative of the shamisen.
The main difference between a sanshin and a gottan is that
the body of a sanshin seems to be produced of a hollowed wooden cavity that is
covered with the use of a kind of membrane, whereas the entire part of the
gottan – the body, the neck and all – consists of solid wood, often of a single
kind, normally Japanese cedar.
The musical repertoire of gottan is normally cheerful and
light, including several folk melodies like the shamisen. The musical
instrument was used for door-to-door musical busking called kadozuke.
Usually, the musical instrument is compared to the kankara,
an Okinawan musical instrument that is related to the sanshin because of the
relative low-cost and ease of the instrument’s construction. The equivalent
all-wood Okinawan musical instrument is called ita sanshin.
