page_title: Koto (instrument)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Koto (instrument) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: A Japanese woman playing the koto, drawn in 1878 by Hasegawa Settei.
context_page_description: The koto is a Japanese stringed musical instrument and the national instrument of Japan. It is derived from the Chinese zheng and se, and similar to the Mongolian yatga, the Korean gayageum and ajaeng, the Vietnamese đàn tranh, the Sundanese kacapi and the Kazakhstan jetigen. Koto are about 180 centimetres length, and made from kiri wood. The most common type uses 13 strings strung over movable bridges used for tuning, different pieces possibly requiring different tuning. 17-string koto are also a common occurrence and act as bass in ensembles. Koto strings are generally plucked using three fingerpicks, worn on the first three fingers of the right hand.
context_section_description: The ancestor of the koto was the Chinese guzheng. It was first introduced to Japan from China in the 7th and 8th century. The first known version had five strings, which eventually increased to seven strings. (It had twelve strings when it was introduced to Japan in the early Nara period (710–784) and increased to thirteen strings). The Japanese koto belongs to the Asian zither family that also comprises the Chinese zheng (ancestral to the other zithers in the family), the Korean gayageum, and the Vietnamese dan tranh. This variety of instrument came in two basic forms, a zither that had bridges and zithers without bridges.
  When the koto was first imported to Japan, the native word koto was a generic term for any and all Japanese stringed instruments. Over time the definition of koto could not describe the wide variety of these stringed instruments and so the meanings changed. The azumagoto or yamatogoto was called the wagon, the kin no koto was called the kin, and the sau no koto (sau being an older pronunciation of 箏) was called the sō or koto.
  The modern koto originates from the gakusō used in Japanese court music. It was a popular instrument among the wealthy; the instrument koto was considered a romantic one. Some literary and historical records indicate that solo pieces for koto existed centuries before sōkyoku, the music of the solo koto genre, was established. According to Japanese literature, the koto was used as imagery and other extra music significance. In one part of The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari), Genji falls deeply in love with a mysterious woman, who he has never seen before, after he hears her playing the koto from a distance.
  The koto of the chikuso was made for the Tsukushigato tradition and only for blind men. Women could not play the instrument in the professional world nor teach it. With the relief of the rule, women started to playing the koto, but not the chikuso because it was designed for the blind which led to a decline in use; other koto proved more useful. The two main koto varieties still used today are the gakuso and zokuso. These two have relatively stayed the same with the exception of material innovations like plastic and the type of strings. The tagenso is the newest addition to the koto family, surfacing in the 19th century, it was purposefully created to access a wider range of sound and advance style of play; these were made with 17, 21, and 31 strings.
  Perhaps the most important influence on the development of koto was Yatsuhashi Kengyo (1614–1685). He was a gifted blind musician from Kyoto who changed the limited selection of six songs to a brand new style of koto music which he called kumi uta. Yatsuhashi changed the tsukushi goto tunings, which were based on gagaku ways of tuning; and with this change, a new style of koto was born. Yatsuhashi is now known as the "Father of Modern Koto".
  A smaller influence in the evolution of the koto is found in the inspiration of a woman named Keiko Nosaka. Keiko Nosaka (a musician who won Grand Prize in Music from the Japanese Ministry of Culture in 2002), felt confined by playing a koto with just 13 strings, so she created new versions of the instrument with 20 or more strings.
  Japanese developments in bridgeless zithers include the one-stringed koto (ichigenkin) and two-stringed koto (nigenkin or yakumo goto). Around the 1920s, Goro Morita created a new version of the two-stringed koto; on this koto, one would push down buttons above the metal strings like the western autoharp. It was named the taishōgoto after the Taishō period.
  At the beginning of the Meiji Period (1868–1912), western music was introduced to Japan. Michio Miyagi (1894–1956), a blind composer, innovator, and performer, is considered to have been the first Japanese composer to combine western music and traditional koto music. Miyagi is largely regarded as being responsible for keeping the koto alive when traditional Japanese arts were being forgotten and replaced by Westernization. He wrote over 300 new works for the instrument before his death in a train accident at t
caption: An 1878 depiction by Settei Hasegawa of a woman playing the koto
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