The World of Japanese Medieval Musicians: Gagaku Encyclopedias and the Cultural History of Japanese Religions
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1The academic study of Japanese religions has overall ignored the role of music in rituals and in doctrinal speculations. This is especially true for Gagaku 雅楽, the ceremonial music of the imperial court and the main temples and shrines of Japan. Introduced to Japan in the sixth century, it went through processes of transformation and consolidation until the tenth century. After that, three Gagaku academies emerged: one based at the imperial palace in Kyoto (Ōuchi gakuso 大内楽所, with strong connections with Iwashimizu Hachimangū 石清水八幡宮), one at Kasuga 春日-Kōfukuji 興福寺 in Nara (Nanto gakuso 南都楽所), and one at Shitennōji 四天王寺 in Osaka (Tennōji gakuso 天王寺楽所). They continued their activities until the early Meiji period, when they were unified and moved to the newly established imperial palace in Tokyo. Over more than one thousand years, Gagaku has generated a wealth of materials: not only musical instruments (the most ancient ones are preserved at the Shōsōin 正倉院 Imperial Repository in Nara) and notation scores, but countless items of visual and material culture (costumes, masks, paintings, accessories etc.) and, importantly, numerous texts about Gagaku itself as a cultural phenomenon. The latter were the primary materials for this series of lectures: Kyōkunshō 教訓抄 by Koma no Chikazane 狛近真 (1177–1242), Zoku Kyōkunshō 続教訓抄 by Koma no Tomokazu 狛朝葛 (1247–1333), and Taigenshō 體源鈔 by Toyohara Muneaki 豊原統秋 (1450–1524). We discussed how these texts offer unique perspectives for a better understanding of medieval Japanese mentalities and religious history.
Lecture 1: The World of Medieval Gagaku
2This lecture provided a general background knowledge about Gagaku and introduced the main sources for this lecture series. In particular, it discussed the history of Japanese Gagaku, the structure of Gagaku academies (gakuso 楽所) and the musicians’ guilds, aspects of this music, and treatments of Gagaku as a form of cultural heritage since the Edo period. The lecture concluded with a discussion about the main features of premodern sources about Gagaku.
Lecture 2: Medieval Japanese Musicians
3This lecture explored what it was like to be a professional Gagaku musician in medieval Japan: the families of the musicians’ guilds at the three Gagaku academies, their learning process, their attitudes about music and dance, and their performance schedules and programs at the imperial court and at the most important temples of Japan.
Lecture 3: Materiality and Immateriality of Musical Instruments
4This lecture examined some of the ways in which musical instruments were conceived of and described in Gagaku encyclopedias. In particular, it focused on the constant oscillation between the materiality of the instruments (rough materials, construction process, performance techniques) and their immaterial qualities (divine origin, supernatural powers, and their agency on the performers and beyond), also by taking into considerations legends about the most famous music instruments (meiki 名器) and their special powers.
Lecture 4: Gagaku and Its Musicians Between the Sacred and the Profane
5Gagaku was a ceremonial often used for entertainment purposes at court and at temples. However, performances also had functions that transcended their immediate occasions and reached out to a metahuman level of divinities and cosmic forces. This lecture addressed some instances of this particular, metahuman function of Gagaku music and Bugaku 舞楽 dances. For example, some music and dances had purification and apotropaic functions (such as the dance Enbu 振鉾 and the flute prelude Ranjō 乱声); some dances were used for divination purposes in battle; some musicians were tasked with the performance of secret rituals, either before or during a Gagaku performance; and the musicians’ families preserved and transmitted a body of secret knowledge and practices, which was sometime explicitly related to the sacred. The lecture concluded with general considerations about Gagaku today and its multiple functions as cultural heritage, art form, and toolbox for new compositions.
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Fabio Rambelli, « The World of Japanese Medieval Musicians: Gagaku Encyclopedias and the Cultural History of Japanese Religions », Annuaire de l'École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Section des sciences religieuses, 132 | 2025, 169-170.
Référence électronique
Fabio Rambelli, « The World of Japanese Medieval Musicians: Gagaku Encyclopedias and the Cultural History of Japanese Religions », Annuaire de l'École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Section des sciences religieuses [En ligne], 132 | 2025, mis en ligne le 05 septembre 2025, consulté le 21 mai 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/asr/5571 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/14mfk
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