In Japan, there is the "Lanling King Entry Song", which is also the most important dance in Japanese dance music, and is called "the masterpiece among famous works". In Japan, any temple that can perform dance music will definitely perform this dance.
——Ge Xiaoyin
The Sui and Tang dynasty music and dances that are now preserved in Japan are both passed down from China and imitated in Japan. According to our research, there are probably three types of transmissions from China:
The first category is the Trick Music introduced in the Sui Dynasty, also known as "Wu Le". Kiraku is the music of ancient Japanese walking ceremonies held at Buddhist temples and is part of the procession ceremony. The path is an offering ceremony that revolves around a Buddha statue or an altar tower. Some of the teams in the Path of Trick Music play various roles recorded in the Sutras, such as bodhisattvas, gods, and goddesses. There are a total of nine Wu Le songs recorded in the Japanese music book "Lesson Copy", except for the first one is an honor guard song, the other eight capitals have actors performing. It contains the simplest plot and action, and the performer wears a mask that covers the entire head. The characters of the different characters are distinguished by this mask, image and costume. The instruments are all thin waist drums. Some of these pieces are performing Buddhist stories, and some are performing secular stories. Because this batch of music has been too long, its relationship with the character and the program of appearance are all messed up. If we can figure out the stories and characters performed in these pieces, we may be able to trace the bud of Chinese drama back to before the Tang Dynasty, because today's Chinese literary history circles generally say that the bud of Chinese drama was in the song and dance drama of the Tang Dynasty, but in fact, during the Eastern Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties of China, there were performances of trick music in folk and monasteries.
Japanese trick music was supposed to have been transmitted to Japan from the Southern Dynasty region known as Wu at that time, so it was also called "Wu Le". The most notable piece of these Wu music is "Wu Gong". The character of "Wu Gong" wears a golden and red crown on his head and holds a flute in his hand, which is a noble and majestic princely figure. There is also a character called "Wu Nu", "Wu Nu" masquerade is the image of a court woman with two double rings on her head, but which song she belongs to has not yet been clarified. Many people speculate that since one is called "Wu Gong" and the other is called "Wu Nu", it should be in the same song. But what is the relationship between these two characters? It's also unclear. According to the research of the Japanese cultural relics community, after some research, we can generally confirm that these two masquerade figures were transmitted to Japan from the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century AD. We can see this by comparing the "Wu Nu" with the 7th-century maids collected in the Shaanxi Museum. Coupled with various sources, including the records in the accounts of the major temples, as well as some documents in the ancient Chinese music books, it is generally possible to confirm the time of the appearance of the "Wu Women". Because this masked "Wu Nu" is missing a piece on the nose, this piece of thing is still preserved, after spelling it, we found that there is a plum blossom makeup on the brain door of the "Wu Nu", and the plum blossom makeup is the makeup of the court women in the Southern Dynasty, the early Tang Dynasty and the Sheng Tang Dynasty.
The second category is the song and dance drama of the Tang Dynasty. Theater experts generally believe that the song and dance drama of the Tang Dynasty is the germ of drama, and cite "dialing heads" and "big faces" as examples. "Big Noodles", also known as "Daimyo", is a dance that wears a mask. According to records, "wearing noodles" came from the ancient Guizi country, that is, the western region, located in the area of present-day Kuqa City in Xinjiang. Specific to the Tang Le dance, it is "Lanling King", and later because I did not know that "Daimian" had other songs, "Daimian" and "Lanling King" were equated. The story of "Lanling King" was first found in the Northern Qi book "Biography of Lanling King". By the time of Northern Qi, the Northern Dynasty had split into two states, Northern Qi and Northern Zhou. Northern Qi had an emperor named Emperor Wenxiang, and his fourth son, Named Changgong, was given the title of King of Lanling County. Because he was handsome and afraid that he would not be able to scare the enemy when he fought, he always wore a helmet to cover his face. At one point he rushed into the enemy position with 500 cavalry and was surrounded by Zhou Dynasty troops under Jin Yongcheng (金墉城, in modern Luoyang, Henan). At that time, the Qi army defending the city did not know him, until he took off his helmet, the Qi army recognized him, so he sent archers to rescue him, and then he led the army to a big victory. Therefore, the soldiers of Northern Qi sang and praised him together. This is the very famous "Lanling King Entry Song". Later, in the performance, this piece became the appearance of him not wearing a helmet, but wearing a mask.
Chinese literary historians attach great importance to this play, seeing it as the origin of Chinese drama, but we have no idea about the details of its performance, how can we explain that drama originated from it? Now we know that Japan has the "Lanling King Entry Song", which is also the most important dance in Japanese dance music, and is called "the masterpiece among famous works". In Japan, any temple that can perform dance music will definitely perform this dance. However, the "Lanling King" in the ancient Japanese books is not written as "Lanling King", but as "Luoling King" or "Ling King". So is this Japanese "Luoling King" the "Lanling King" of China? Since the beginning of the last century, some authoritative scholars in Japan have said that the "Luoling King" in Japan is not the "Lanling King" of the Tang Dynasty, but the senior monk named Buddha Zhe brought to Japan from India, and also said that this dance performance is the story of the Luo Dragon King in Indian Buddhism. There is also a saying that this dance performance is the ancient Indian drama "The Joy of the Dragon King". Because these claims are from some university scholars, they are almost conclusive, and even Mr. Ren Bantang, an old authority on "Tang Teasing" in China, has accepted them. In the 1980s, there was a scholar in China named Zhou Huabin, who was a professor at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute (now the Communication University of China), and he made a very important discovery. He said that there was a figure of a divine beast in the tomb passage of The Lanling King, very similar to the dragon on the mask worn by the Japanese "Luoling King". In addition, we found a batch of masks in Guizhou, and there is a kind of dragon king mask in this batch of masks, the jaw of the mask can move, and the eyes can also turn. The shape and production method of this mask is exactly the same as that of "Luo Ling Wang". Therefore, Professor Zhou's research strongly proves that in fact, the manufacture of this mask comes from China, and also proves the relationship between the "Luoling King" in Japan and the "Lanling King" in China.
The third category is sui and Tang dynasty music and dance without dramatic factors. Here I would like to take "Yushu Backyard Flower" and "Neon Feather Dance" as examples. According to historical records, the "Neon Dress Feather Dance" was presented to Emperor Tang Ming by a Hexi Jiedushi named Yang Jingshu at that time, and it was originally a "Brahman Song", but after Tang Ming Emperor's transformation, the Taoist color was relatively strong. Later, in the Southern Song Dynasty, there was a man named Chen Liang, who also wrote about this dance in his music book, saying that the dancers wore red fresh clothes, wore fresh crowns, and had a Xia Shuai on their shoulders, which was the same as the costume described in Bai Juyi's long poem "Neon Dress Feather Dance Song".
So what does "Yushu Backyard Flower" look like? We don't know anything about it now. Later, I found that in the Japanese ancient music books, there was a dance such as "Yushu Backyard Flower". After our research, we found that "Yushu Backyard Flower" actually contains three music and dances, mainly "Yushu Backyard Flower", of which two stickers are "Neon Dress Feather Dance", and two stickers are two movements. What is more interesting is that this dance movement also contains another music dance of the Chen Dynasty, called "Golden Nobile Two Arms Hanging", its dancers wear a red dress on the long skirt, which has decorations covering the shoulders, holding a gold nobile in his hand, hanging jade hooks and golden bells, rhythmically beating when dancing, and perhaps the two arms are drooping when dancing, so it is called "two arms hanging".
There are many songs of Sui and Tang music and dance, so I will just give a few examples of the results we have already examined and roughly introduce them to you. I hope that everyone can see the glory of Sheng Tang culture from this.
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kudzu
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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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