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Abstract
The focus of this study is the Tsugaru-jamisen, a term that refers both to an instrument and the musical genre in which it is used. The shamisen is a Japanese three-stringed, plucked spike lute that arrived from China, via Okinawa, in the sixteenth century, and became an important instrument in both art and folk musics. Tsugaru-jamisen music is a folk genre with origins in the late nineteenth century.
Both the physical instrument and the musical genre are known as Tsugaru-jamisen, and I will consider both aspects in this thesis. I begin by tracing the path of the plucked spike lute from west Asia, where it originated but is no longer widely used, to China and Japan where it remains an important part of their traditional music cultures. I then give a detailed organological account of the shamisen used in various traditional music genres today. Following this I briefly consider the history and musical characteristics of the art music shamisen genres that preceded the Tsugaru-jamisen as preparation for the next section, a slightly more detailed description of the history and musical development of the Tsugaru-jamisen itself. As this aspect of my subject has been covered in some depth in English, I give little more than an outline of the history, but look in more detail at methods of transmission, a subject that has received less attention. In the final chapter, I give a general analysis of the compositional and improvisational form known as kyokubiki (an instrumental piece based on one of a number of specific canonical songs), which has come to play a central role in Tsugaru-jamisen music since the last half of the twentieth century. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
