The decline of court culture and gagaku

A century of war destroyed Kyoto, bringing severe decline to court society and dispersing the court musicians. This crisis was averted somewhat by the musician families of Nara and the Osaka temple Shitennō-ji. Not only did they continue their hereditary musical traditions, but they also managed to preserve many precious music books and scores that had been compiled and passed down by previous generations of musicians, which recorded the gagaku tradition of the past.

With the dawn of peace in the Momoyama period (late 16th century), the musicians of Nara and Shitennō-ji were called to the court in Kyoto, where gagaku was revived by bringing together the elements of the tradition that they had preserved. From this grew the new tradition of the sanbō-gakusho (‘music centers of the three directions’) or sanbō-gakunin (‘musicians of the three directions’), a system for collaboration between the three centers of the gagaku tradition in the celebration of court ceremony, based on a sharing of their records and scores.

‘Musicians of the three directions’ and the Momijiyama musicians

After unifying the country, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536/7–98) entertained Emperor Go-Yōzei at his Jurakudai mansion in 1588 with gagaku performed by musicians of the three directions in collaboration. It was a magnificent celebration, intended to reproduce the glories of court culture.

As it made solid steps toward revival, gagaku was supported strongly by the succeeding Tokugawa shogunate. For the performance of ceremonial music at rites of the Tokugawa clan, a number of musicians of the three directions were called to Edo (present-day Tokyo), where they were established at Momijiyama within the Edo castle. Called the Momijiyama gakunin, they helped maintain the gagaku tradition, in collaboration with the musicians of the three directions. Together they numbered about one hundred musicians in strength, and this formed the foundation for a new peak of the gagaku tradition in the Edo period, surpassed only by the earlier peak of the Heian period.

Examination system of the ‘three directions’ and the revival of ancient song and dance

One element that contributed to improvement in performance standards and maintenance of the gagaku tradition was the examination system for musicians of the three directions, known as sanbō kyūdai. The results of the examination, held in principle once every four years, determined the level of a musician’s individual remuneration from the shogunate. This system continued for two hundred years.

The Edo period was also a time in which Confucian scholars and scholars of national studies (kokugaku) joined the gagaku musicians in research on the history and theory of gagaku. Gagaku was also adopted by regional domains, and much survey and research was undertaken. As time went on, gagaku gained a new popularity as interest in gagaku performance extended from the noble and military classes, and Buddhist and Shinto priests, to the merchant and farmer classes.

With improvement in performance standards and the deepening of research, attempts began to be made to revive elements of the tradition lost during earlier centuries and the war years of the medieval period. Pieces of the indigenous kuniburi-no-utamai song and dance repertoire, for instance, had been long extinct, strongly associated as they had been with the limited performance contexts of court and Shinto ritual. Much if not all of the court song genres saibara and rōei had been lost, mainly because of the decline in court culture, but also perhaps because of a loss of popularity. Earnest research in an effort to bring these lost traditions back to life, however, resulted in the revival of many of them. In many cases, the modern performance tradition is a continuation of these revivals.