Yoshiwara Yukaku, during the Edo period, was the largest social gathering place for the people of that time, and a place where various trends were transmitted to the society. Music culture was also an important element that colored Yoshiwara. However, many historical documents have been lost due to repeated fires, causing the musical culture of Yoshiwara to remain mostly unexplored. In response to this situation, this study focuses on the Yoshiwara from the 1720s to the 1830s, and uses Edo literature to reveal aspects of Yoshiwara's musical culture. This thesis analyzes two types of Edo literature: novelettes, called sharebon, and essays. In addition, this paper is part of a long-term musicological study of Yoshiwara using Edo literature, and some of the sharebons and essays dealt with in the long-term study were used in the analysis in this paper.
    Since the contents of sharebon are fictional, they sometimes use metaphors and dramatic scripts to exaggerate, adapt, or change some of the realities of that time. However, many of them are based on Yoshiwara, and vividly depict the lives of people in Yoshiwara at that time. Essays, on the other hand, are records of the author's experiences and knowledge, and provide information closer to the reality of society. By using these two types of literature and supplementing each other's information, this study aims to gain a multifaceted view of Yoshiwara's musical culture. Among the musical culture of Yoshiwara, this study focuses on Sugagaki, shamisen music used to attract customers, and Daikoku-mai, a New Year's dance, as well as reviews of music performed in Yoshiwara.
    The first object of analysis is the description of Sugagaki. Sugagaki is the shamisen music played by prostitutes or geishas at the start of the buiness day in Yoshiwara. Previous studies have proposed that Sugagaki was performed only on the shamisen and was not accompanied by singing. However, as a result of analyzing the information in both the sharebons and essays, paying attention to the chronological order, it was found that Sugagaki was accompanied by songs at one time, and the lyrics were identified within these texts. Multiple lyrics were sung to the accompaniment of shamisen music.
    The second object of analysis is the description of Daikoku-mai. Daikoku-mai is an annual event in Yoshiwara, a kind of New Year's dance. The Daikoku-mai is known as an art form that has been revived mainly in western Japan, but it was not clear when the Daikoku-mai was first performed in Yoshiwara, located in Edo (eastern Japan). However, this analysis identifies the approximate time when Daikoku-mai began in Yoshiwara, as well as its period of prosperity and decline, by comparing the descriptions in the sharebons and essays. In addition, the full lyrics of the song accompanying the Daikoku-mai, which were partially described in the sharebons, were clarified in the essays.

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    The introduction of Western music to Japan in the late 19th century profoundly influenced the musical activities of Japanese Buddhists. From the mid-Meiji period (around 1889) several Buddhist organizations began to create Buddhist educational songs (shōka) influenced by Western musical idioms. As Takeuchi Jun’yū (1965), Yamaguchi Atsuko (2019), and others have noted, these new songs were created both as a way of facilitating ritual activities but also with the objective of community building and proselytizing. Yet the influence of Western music on Meiji-era Buddhist music making did not simply involve the creation of new songs, but also prompted a rethinking of the relationship between Buddhism and music itself, one that intersected with disparate discourses concerning religion, education, and musical life, and how these related to the Japanese nation. In this paper I expand on the above-mentioned studies to consider in more detail how the relationship between music and Buddhism was actively theorized and constructed in the Meiji era, and how the development of this relationship was also embedded within discourses taking place in other parts of society. In particular, I consider the activities of the Jōdo-sect priest Iwai Chikai (1863-1942), and his 1894 book titled Theory of Buddhist Music (Bukkyō Ongaku-ron). I argue that this work was directly influenced by Iwai’s studies at Tokyo School of Music between 1889 and 1891, and I also consider the influence of the music scholars and educationalists Kōzu Senzaburō and Izawa Shūji on Iwai’s work. I position the Buddhist song movement of this period in the context of a more general construction of national identity sparked by the promulgation of the Meiji constitution in 1889. With reference to previous studies by David Smith (2014) and others, I argue that Iwai’s activities, spanning a number of different social groups and organizations, can be seen as an ‘interconnected network’, encompassing musical, educational, and religious developments within Japanese society in the mid-Meiji period.

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    Kanz al-tuḥaf, a 14th century musical treatise, describes a bowed string instrument called ghishak (geshak). The treatise provides us with a valuable information on making the instrument with an illustration diagram. The ghishak is a two-stringed spike fiddle, the long neck of which pierces through the sound-chest. We learn from the description that the implement of sounding was called kamānche, literally meaning a “little bow.” Presumably, the term “kamānche” soon became the name of the fiddle itself.
    ʻAbd al-Qādir Marāghī (d.1435) describes in his treatises (Jāmiʻ al-alḥān, Maqāṣid al-alḥān, and Sharḥ al-adwār ) three kinds of fiddles that existed in the 15th century: kamānche, ghizhak, and yektāy. Kamānche seems to be identical to the ghishak described in the Kanz al-tuḥaf. Yektāy is a single-stringed spike fiddle. Ghizhak has a larger soundchest and eight sympathetic strings. However, the structural difference between the kamānche and the ghizhak is rather obscure. Because Marāghī did not provide us with any diagram of the ghizhak, there is no way to know whether the ghizhak was a spike fiddle or a short-necked fiddle. No earlier literature has questioned this problem.
    This paper argues that the ghizhak described by Marāghī is not a spike fiddle but a short-necked fiddle with sympathetic strings. Supposedly the 15th-century ghizhak has survived as ghichak or qeychak, the instrument of itinerant musicians in the Sistan and Baluchestan Province of Iran. In terms of construction and shape, qeychak is virtually the same short-necked fiddle called sārindā in Afghanistan, Pakistan and north India. The nomenclature qeychak is apparently derived from ghizhak, although it is locally called sorūd (soruz).

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    Kanguri is the highest pitch in the basic scales of both yowagin and tsuyogin styles of nō singing. It is used mainly in the yowagin style by the Hōshō school and the tsuyogin style by the Kanze school. The melodic phrases in which this pitch is commonly used are considered difficult to master.
    Kanguri is marked with supplementary notations in all three types of utai texts currently used in the Kanze school: Kanze-ryū Taisei-ban utaibon, Kanze-ryū Sankō utaibon, and Umewaka utaibon. The Umewaka utaibon used by the Umewaka Rokurō-ke—which for 33 years from 1921 operated as an independent school apart from the Kanze—is unique in further distinguishing between shin-no-kanguri and sō-no-kanguri.
    This paper compares the notations used in the various Kanze school utaibon, examines how shin-no-kanguri and sō-no-kanguri are sung based on actual performances by Umewaka actors, and considers the treatment of kanguri in the play Ōmu Komachi.
    In concrete terms, shin-no-kanguri is sung by lowering the pitch by a minor third after hitting kanguri and gliding the note up before coming down to jō. This gradational lowering of the pitch is also observed in the treatment of kanguri by non-Umewaka singers.
    We have learned that sō-no-kanguri, on the other hand, involves descending to jō directly from kanguri. This unique style has been passed down in the Umewaka-ke for a number of generations.
    The only play in the Kanze repertoire to use kanguri in a yowagin context is Ōmu Komachi. In the Umewaka utaibon, though, this section is written simply as kuri, not kanguri. And this indeed is how it is sung by Umewaka actors when the play is performed as a suutai. When it is staged as a full-length nō, however, a pitch even higher than the standard kanguri is used. This can be said to reflect an effort to both adhere to tradition, on the one hand, and introduce new, artistic innovations, on the other.

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