KOKYŪ: Japanese musical instrument

The Kokyū is a traditional string musical instrument from Japan. This musical instrument is played with the use of a bow. Although the instrument was introduced to this country by China, together with the shamisen, the material used on the instrument, the shape and the sound of the instrument are distinctive to Japan. The musical instrument also can be found in an Okinawan version known as kūchō in the Okinawan language.

The Kokyū is analogous in construction to the shamisen, appearing like a smaller version of that instrument. The musical instrument is 70 cm long, having its neck manufactured of ebony and a hollow body that is manufactured of coconut or styrax japonica wood, coated on both ends with the skin of a cat. The musical instrument has three or four strings and can be played upright, with a horsetail-strung bow rubbing against the instrument’s strings. In Japan, the musical instrument was formerly used as an integral part of the sankyoku group, together with the koto and the shamisen, but at the starting part of the 20^th century, the shakuhachi normally performs the function formerly filled by this musical instrument.

Since Shinei Matavoshi, a kokyu and sanshin musician and sanshin producers, fabricated and popularized a four stringed version of the musical instrument in order to expand the range of the musical instrument, the instrument became much more prominent.

The musical instrument has also been used in jazz and blues, with the American multi-instrumentalist Eric Golub, engineering the use of the Kokyū in these non-traditional contexts.