[yamato-goto].
Six-string long zither of Japan. Its name (wa/yamato, ‘Japan’; gon/goto, ‘zither’) reflects its accepted status as Japan's only indigenous stringed instrument. Prior to the importation of the Koto from China around the 7th century, the word koto designated this instrument. (For its uses and early history, see Japan, §II, 2, IV, 2 and V, 3.)
The instrument has changed little since the 8th century. Made of paulownia wood, it resembles the koto in general shape but narrows gradually from the player's left to right (from about 24 to 15 cm); its length ranges from 188 to 197 cm and its thickness from 4 to 8 cm. The strings too converge towards the right, rather than remaining parallel as on the koto. Like the koto, the wagon has a movable tuning bridge for each string, is slightly convex laterally and is generally made of a hollowed-out upper part closed by a flat soundboard underneath. The koto-type bridges are made from the unpeeled forks of maple twigs, although now actual koto bridges are sometimes used. Setting it apart from all other Asian long zithers is the row of six projecting ‘teeth’ at the left end, which serve as attachment points for the strings (illustration).
The tuning is non-consecutive (re-entrant): one typical tuning is d'–a–d–b–g–e from the string nearest the player. Two main playing techniques are combined, both unlike any traditional koto genre. In one, all six strings are strummed with an oval plectrum in the right hand, and the left hand then damps all but one string. In the other, the left-hand fingers also pluck strings. A string is never pressed to the left of the tuning bridge to raise its pitch.
The Shōsōin, Japan's 8th-century imperial treasure-house, contains eight wagon, basically like the modern instrument in all essentials. Several had feet, as on the koto, indicating that they were placed on the floor as is usual today; this contrasts with evidence from 5th- to 6th-century haniwa funerary sculptures and 8th-century poetic references, which indicate that the instrument was placed on the lap.
W. Malm: Japanese Music and Musical Instruments (Tokyo, 1959/R), 43–5
K. Hayashi and others: Shōsōin no gakki [Musical instruments in the Shōsōin treasury] (Tokyo, 1967) [with Eng. summary]
E. Harich-Schneider: A History of Japanese Music (London, 1973)
D. Hughes: ‘Music Archaeology of Japan: Data and Interpretation’, The Archaeology of Early Music Cultures, ed. E. Hickmann and D. Hughes (Bonn, 1988), 55–87
DAVID W. HUGHES