Father-son transmission is one of the main ways of passing on the Japanese Gagaku tradition. In order to ensure the right of their own musicians to play, as well as the authority of the secret music, they often use the method of secret transmission. Some experts in Japan who study Gagaku say that those families were very nervous in order to preserve the secret music, afraid that others would eavesdrop on it and be learned by others.
——Ge Xiaoyin
Japan's successive emperors have preferred music and dance, and if you look through Japan's history books, you will know that there are many princes and nobles in the Japanese imperial court who can sing and dance, and many people can compose and choreograph, and they teach each other. The emperor also knew music and often came to teach these ministers himself. For example, Emperor Akihito at that time taught a minister to play instruments such as flutes, harps, pipas, and koto. Because it was a hobby of the imperial court, music and dance became a necessary cultivation for the nobility from an early age. Judging from the historical records of the Japanese people, there are many examples of no adult princes as dancers in Japanese court ceremonies, which is very different from our Tang Dynasty. The musicians and dancers of the Tang Dynasty were all from humble origins and could not sit on an equal footing with the court ministers. The social status of many musicians and dancers in Japan's Heian Dynasty was relatively high, and if musicians and dancers could sing and dance, they could often get rewards from the court and easily become knights. Although the Japanese underground technicians just mentioned may have a lower status than the nobility, they are often selected from among the courtiers who are good at music.
The inheritance of Gagaku is closely related to the inheritance of Japanese underground musicians. From the 9th to the 11th century AD, the Japanese imperial court organized foreign music and dance on a large scale, so that Gagaku began to tend to be Japanese. At this time, they divided various foreign music into two categories: Tang Music (Zuo Le) and Goryeo Music (Right Music), and when performing, the Left Dance (Tang Le Dance) and the Right Dance (Goryeo Music Dance) must be performed together. In addition, there is also a Lin Yi music in the left dance, a three-Han music and Bohai music in the right dance, and a Bohai country in the northeast during the Tang Dynasty, and Bohai music refers to the music of the Bohai country.
In Japan, families such as Genji, Daijin, Abe, Chi, and Toi are hereditary musicians. How do they pass on Gagaku? Generally, it is centered on the flow of the concubine, that is, the father and son must pass on the concubine, and later the family will be separated, or there is a stream, the family is from the family, and there are more and more branches, so slowly it will form a family group to engage in this musical activity. Each clan is divided into many tributaries, and each has its own unique type of tantric music and instruments. But what if there are no boys in the family? There are exceptions that have spread to other people's homes, but in general, such examples are rare. Father-son transmission is one of the main ways of passing on the Japanese Gagaku tradition. In order to ensure the right of their own musicians to play, as well as the authority of the secret music, they often use the method of secret transmission. Some experts in Japan who study Gagaku say that those families were very nervous in order to preserve the secret music, afraid that others would eavesdrop on it and be learned by others. Therefore, such a way of inheritance allows the secret music to remain unchanged for a long time. However, it is precisely because of this inheritance method that the inheritance of Gagaku can only be learned by the predecessors one by one, and it is impossible to surpass the previous performers. This has led to gagaku gradually becoming a "fossil culture".
During the Meiji Restoration, both the music house and the Gagaku Liao were abolished, and the Gagaku Department was established, which had teachers and students. At that time, the musical scores inherited by various families and lineages were also sorted out, and a "Meiji Selection Score" was written. The music club is still performing, and the royal family will perform publicly in the spring and autumn of each year. In addition, temples and clubs from all over the world also perform.
Although Gagaku is now known as the "fossil culture", it has not been completely unchanged for more than a thousand years. In the process of their inheritance, there will also be many problems. First of all, the traffic of Tang Le to Japan is very inconvenient, and it often encounters wind and waves. So after a few years of twists and turns, many of the performances of the tracks were forgotten. Sometimes we see in Japanese history books that the Japanese people at that time made great efforts to come to China to learn advanced culture. It is also very difficult for Japanese officials to send Tang envoys to China, and if an emperor reigns for a relatively short time, it is very likely that he will not be able to send a Tang envoy at one time. Under normal circumstances, an emperor can only send a Tang delegation once in his lifetime, because the financial and civilian resources it consumes are too great. Unless the emperor reigns for a particularly long time, he may have sent it twice, but this is relatively rare. For example, the Tang mission sent by Emperor Ren and the fifth year, before that, in fact, they had been preparing for many years, and they had already gone to sea once in the third year of Chenghe, but the Tang mission encountered wind and waves, and some ships were all broken, and finally they could only return to rebuild the ship. But who knows, the next year they went to sea again or failed, until chenghe five years to be considered successful. At that time, there was a musician in Japan who wrote poetry called Ono Huang, and the imperial court sent him to study in the Tang Dynasty, because the journey was too hard, so he pretended to be ill and refused to go. Indeed, every time tang envoys were sent out, it was difficult to say whether they could come out alive, and many people were even buried in the sea. Therefore, Japanese ancient music books often write a certain song, a certain sticker (a sticker is a certain piece of music), forgotten in the process of transmission, and some are mixed with two or three songs. In addition, because the Japanese do not quite understand the allusions contained in some songs, there are many lyrics and stories, and after it was transmitted to Japan, the music had a process of Japaneseization in the Heian Dynasty.
Therefore, although we can see a lot of information now, these materials are not available for use, and we must go through a very meticulous examination and collation to determine which are the original songs of the Tang Dynasty, which are rewritten, and which are imitations. Because no one has done such a comprehensive scientific investigation in this regard before, we want to do such a job, hoping to be able to examine those recorded songs one by one. Of course, not all the pieces can be figured out, but there are now some important pieces that we have examined and achieved a little success.
mentor
kudzu
dawn
sound
Professor Emeritus of Boya, Peking University, Doctoral Supervisor of Guoxue College. He was a professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Graduate School of the University of Tokyo and a chair professor at the Department of Chinese at Hong Kong Baptist University. He has long been engaged in the study of the literature of the Six Dynasties of Han, Wei, Sui and Tang Dynasties. His major works include "History of Poetry of the Eight Dynasties", "The Unauthorized Change of Han and Tang Literature", "Research on the Pastoral Poetry School of Landscape and Water", "Tang and Song Prose", "Chinese Scenic Spots and History and Culture", "Exploration of Ancient Poetry Art", "Study of Poetic Asanas of the Six Dynasties of the Pre-Qin, Han, and Wei Dynasties".
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Editor: Niu Yajie
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