What's a good history of gagaku and/or the sho?

May 18, 2011 5:08 PM

What should I read for a solid but concise history of gagaku and/or the sho? I am also interested in court rituals in Japan generally. I read somewhere they served a significant legitimizing-of-the-court function in Japan ca. 700 or 800, and would like to confirm, deny, and learn more about this idea.
posted by andrewpcone to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

I think it's highly unlikely you will find any more than a cursory treatment of gagaku/sho in English, unless you go to some university library and dig up some PhD thesis that was written and forgotten about long ago.

I enjoy playing the gagaku piece Etenraku Imayou on my shakuhachi, though. It's actually a pretty catchy piece of music for being more than 1,000 years old!
posted by zachawry at 5:13 PM on May 18, 2011

zachawry speaks truth. Check out the table of contents on this book, it seems to fit your criteria of something concise. The Japanese gagaku and sho Wikipedia pages have some tasty links. English ones, too, for that matter. If you need to get down to the nitty-gritty of political function and influences, you are going to be solidly in the territory of opinion, and searching Japanese academic papers will be the (painful) route.

Aaand, here's a sho video I uploaded in the early days of YouTube. The sho closeup starts at 2:45.
posted by planetkyoto at 6:24 PM on May 18, 2011

How peculiar, I went to my co-worker's wedding in March, and it turns out he plays the Sho, and performed a number at his reception. I did take a short video of it, but I would have to ask him for permission to upload it, should that be wanted. I'll see if I can ask him about its history.
posted by lundman at 8:18 PM on May 18, 2011