浪花節
Sung narrative (rōkyoku)
Naniwabushi (浪花節), also called rōkyoku (浪曲), is a Japanese art of sung storytelling: one performer tells a long tale, half sung and half spoken, while a shamisen player accompanies. It grew out of street performance in the early Meiji era and became one of the most popular entertainments in Japan in the first half of the twentieth century.
Liner notes
A single story usually takes about half an hour. The tales favour loyalty, duty and human feeling, which is why "naniwabushi" is still used in everyday Japanese for anything sentimental or tear-jerking.
How to listen
Two people share the stage. The narrator, the rōkyokushi, stands at the centre and moves between two modes. The fushi are the sung passages, which set the scene and voice what the characters feel. The tanka are spoken dialogue, in which the narrator acts out each character in turn. Performers have an old saying for what matters most: first the voice, second the melody, third the speech.
The second person is the shamisen player, the kyokushi. Naniwabushi uses the heavy, thick-necked shamisen, tuned in the mode called sansagari and played with a small plectrum. There is a script but no written score, so the two performers have to listen to each other closely. One modern narrator has compared their exchange on stage to a jazz session. Listen for how the shamisen answers and pushes the voice rather than simply following it.
A short history
Naniwabushi drew on older itinerant arts: chobokure and chongare comic chanting, the ballads called saimon, and the religious narratives of sekkyōbushi. In the Kansai region a related style went by the name ukare-bushi. Despite the reference to Naniwa, the old name for Osaka, the name "naniwabushi" itself took hold in Tokyo. For years its performers worked in makeshift booths at fairgrounds and busy squares. Sources disagree on exactly when they organised, but by about 1879 they appear to have held licences as entertainers.
Over the next two decades the art moved indoors. By 1900, more than a third of the variety halls in Tokyo were billing naniwabushi as their main fare. The first recording was made in 1903, and 1906 brought a great wave of popularity in Tokyo. In 1907 the narrator Tōchūken Kumoemon filled a large Tokyo theatre for 27 days running, and naniwabushi became theatre entertainment that could fill a thousand seats or more.
Newspapers began calling the art "rōkyoku", and in the Shōwa era that name gradually replaced the older one. Radio and records carried it from the cities to the countryside. At its peak in the early Shōwa years there were about 3,000 narrators across the country. After the war its popularity fell sharply. It still has regular homes, among them the Mokuba-tei hall in Asakusa, Tokyo, and a hall by Isshin-ji temple in Osaka.
Start with
Shinshōgai, "New Life", was recorded in 1906 by Suehirotei Tatsumaru, voice with shamisen. It dates from the year naniwabushi was booming in Tokyo, three years after the first recording of the art.
Questions
- What is naniwabushi?
- Naniwabushi, also called rōkyoku, is Japanese narrative singing in which one performer tells a story in alternating sung and spoken passages, accompanied by a shamisen player. It began as street performance in the early Meiji era and was a leading popular entertainment in the first half of the twentieth century.
- What is the difference between naniwabushi and rōkyoku?
- They are the same art. Naniwabushi is the older name. Rōkyoku came into use through newspapers and became the usual term during the Shōwa era.
- What instrument accompanies rōkyoku?
- A thick-necked shamisen, tuned in the sansagari mode and played with a small plectrum. The player is called the kyokushi and works without a written score, following the narrator closely.