Photo/Illutration Children play the biwa at an event in Aizumi, Tokushima Prefecture, in 2017. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

A young girl named Biwa is the heroine of “Heike Monogatari” (The Heike Story), a Japanese anime series.

In the series, based on a medieval Japanese war epic called "The Tale of the Heike," Biwa witnesses the tragic fate of the Taira family while performing a Japanese musical instrument called the biwa during the Genpei War (1180-85), the final struggle between the Taira and Minamoto clans.

As I watched the anime on a video-streaming service, I wanted to know more about the Japanese short-necked lute, which produces plaintive sounds.

I visited Yukihiro Goto, 61, who played the biwa for the anime series.

“After I started pursuing a career as a guitarist, I was shocked by the biwa’s powers of expression when I first encountered the instrument at the age of 19,” Goto said.

The biwa produced exotic sounds as he played it in front of me. Just one strum on the biwa makes you feel as if you were standing amid the hustle and bustle of a city in Persia, believed to be the birthplace of the instrument, or India.

The "Tale of the Heike" was spread by “biwa hoshi,” usually blind traveling performers reciting vocal literature to the accompaniment of the biwa.

One famous biwa hoshi is Miminashi Hoichi, or Hoichi the Earless, described by Koizumi Yakumo (1850-1904), or Lafcadio Hearn, in his collection of mainly stories of the supernatural and one of his most important works called “Kwaidan.”

These wandering minstrels recounted stories about a warfare era in which court nobles and fearless warriors were key players. Since these stories were chanted to the accompaniment of an instrument, illiterate masses loved them as well.

“The sound of the Gion Shoja temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall.” I felt these famous opening lines of “The Tale of the Heike” were rather dry and dull when I was a student told to memorize them.

When they were chanted in a melody, however, they gave me a profound sense of pathos about how the doom of the Taira clan was sealed by its defeat in the Battle of Dannoura (1185).

Goto allowed me to pluck the strings of his beloved biwa.

The biwa, with silk strings dyed in yellow, is played with a boxwood “bachi,” a large wedge-shaped plectrum. All I could do was randomly twang strings, but I could still recognize the richness of its sounds.

The numbers of both biwa makers and performers have sharply declined since the prewar period, Goto laments.

If it had not been for the instrument called the biwa, this national epic depicting the tragic story about the downfall of a powerful clan might have vanished into the haze of time long ago. I realized that we have school textbooks containing this epic and anime series based on it thanks to the biwa.

--The Asahi Shimbun, April 3

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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