Min yo: Folk Music of Japan

The Japanese folk songs (min yo) can be grouped and classified in many types but is often convenient to think of four main parts; the work songs, religious songs (such as the sato kangura a form of Shintoists music), songs used for gatherings such as weddings festival and funerals (matsuri, especially Obon) and children’s songs (warabe uta).

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In min yo, singers are usually followed by the three-stringed lute called the shamisen, taiko drums, and a bamboo flute known as shakuhachi. Other instruments that could accompany are a transverse flute called the shinobue, a bell called as kane, a hand drum known as the tsuzumi and/or 13-stringed zither called the koto. In Okinawa, the main instrument is the sanshin. These are traditional Japanese instruments, but present instrumentation like electric guitars and synthesizers, is also used in this day and age, when enka singers cover the traditional min yo songs (Enka being a Japanese music genre all its own).

Some of the terms that are often heard when speaking about min yo are ondo, bushi, bon utam, and komori uta. An ondo generally defines any traditional song with a characteristic swing that may be heard as 2/4 time rhythm (though artists usually do not group beats). The typical folk song heard at Obon festival dances will most likely be an ondo. A fushi is a song with a characteristic melody. Its very name, which is pronounced bushi in compounds, refers to as melody or rhythms; the word is hardly used in its own, but is usually prefixed by a term referring to occupation, location, personal name or the like. Bon uta, as the name implies are songs for Obon, the lantern festival of the dead. Komori uta are children’s personal songs, the names of min’yo songs are often used as to describe term as usually in the end. For instance; Tokyo Ondo, Kushimoto Bushi, Hokkai Bon Uta, and Itsuki no Komoriuta, several of these songs include extra stress on a particular syllable as well as pitched shouts (kakegoe). Kakegoe are generally shouts of cheer but in min’yo they are often included as part of the choruses, they are many kakegoe, and however they are different in place to place. Okinawa Min’yo for instance, one will hear the common ha iya sasa in mainland Japan, though; one will be more likely to hear a yoisho sate or a sore, while others are a donto koi abd dokoisho.

Presently a guild-based system called the iemoto system has been applied to some types of min’yo, this system was initially established for changing classical genres like nagauta, koto, shakuhachi music, but since it proved profitable to teachers and supported by students who wished to obtain certificates of proficiency and musician’s names continues to extent the genres such as min’yo, Tsugaru-jamisen and other types of music that were traditionally changed more informally. Now some min’yo is passed on in such pseudo-family organization and long apprenticeships are shared.