Music between religion worship and entertainment in Japan

Japan is a country that has a great impact on the world from many perspectives. Not only because of their strong economy and great technology, their culture also gives people extraordinary impressions. Japanese music as an indispensable part of Japanese culture, it is also being popular in different continents. However, “Japanese Music” is a broad topic and there are far more things we need to study and observe to completely understand beside to listen the music itself. Although Japanese music is a big topic, it can specify to different Japanese Music style or genre. In my opinion, Japanese music between religion worship and entertainment are highly linked together. Comparing the Japanese court music “Gagaku” and the Japanese folk music of religion “Shinto” Can show many similarities between these two as well as some differences.

Gagaku in Japanese literally means “the elegant music”. Gagaku classified in to two styles: Togaku and Komagaku. Togaku means “music of the left”, which consist the music from China and India originally, and Komagaku means “music of the right”, consist the music from Korea and Manchuria originally, no string instrument was included. Gagaku is the oldest art music in Japan and probably the oldest orchestral music in the world.

Back to Nara period (553-749), Gagaku introduced into Japan and performed as court music. Afterward they change a little bit of tones and scales to Japanese style. The form of present Gagaku performance was evolved and established in the Heian period (794-1185). After Gagaku introduced into Japan, it is getting popular outside of the court, and people start to combine Gagaku with folk song and dance and divided into tens of thousands of branch, for example Kagura, Yamat...

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...since those tradition folk dance existed before Gagaku music introduced into Japan. People might even use audio tape to replace some instrumental performance.

In conclusion, although Japanese music between religious worship and court performance seems to have differences on their function or playing style, they also have some similarities that link them together. Court performance Gagaku are more formal and structured on instrument, length of time and occasion, yet Shinto worship performance are less informal, less etiquette, and divided to huge amount of genre and style. The same points between court performance and Shinto worship are they use same source of music, and both of them have a function of “Entertainment” according to Japanese culture. In my opinion, Japan is a country that doing well on extending their culture and in favor of many other countries