(from ko: ‘foreign’, ‘barbarian’; kyū: ‘bow’). Japanese spike fiddle. It is about 69 cm long, with a soundbox measuring 14 x 12 x 7·5 cm; the bow is about 95 to 120 cm long. This is Japan’s only indigenously evolved fiddle (although several others were used in minshingaku music). It is smaller than the shamisen (see Japan, §II, 6), but otherwise nearly identical in shape and construction, differing mainly in its long spike, the shape and position of the bridge and the lack of any device to generate the buzzing sound called sawari. The kokyū is held vertically, its spike inserted between the knees of the kneeling performer or (especially for women) resting on the floor in front of the knees (see illustration). As with the Javanese rebab the instrument itself, not the bow, is rotated to select the appropriate string; the bow always follows the same path. There are usually three strings, but certain schools double the highest string (a practice introduced in the mid-18th century).
The kokyū had appeared at least by the early 17th century; in early depictions its body is smaller and rounder than that of the modern instrument. It may have developed from a marriage of the shamisen not with a jinghu-type Chinese fiddle but with the European rebec, a hypothesis suggested by organological evidence, by Japan’s ties with Europe around the time that the kokyū appeared, and by the apparent occurrence of raheika (the Japanese word for rebec is rabeika) as an early alternative name for the instrument. The kokyū was quickly adopted both by low-caste itinerants and by the guild of blind shamisen and koto players. The blind musicians developed a small repertory of ‘basic pieces’ (honkyoku), a few of which survive. By the mid-17th century the kokyū alternated with the hitoyogiri as the third member of the sankyoku (chamber music) trio. In the bunraku puppet theatre it joined the shamisen in scenes of extreme pathos. It also came to be used in certain regional folk music. By the late 19th century the role of the kokyū in sankyoku had been usurped by the shakuhachi except in accompaniments to the stately jiuta-mai dances. Today it survives mainly as an instrument of worship in the Tenri-Kyō religion. The kokyū is usually tuned a 5th above the shamisen, in san-sagari tuning. It does not change tuning in mid-piece, unlike the shamisen and koto.
The kokyū is similar to the Okinawan kūchō, although the relationship has not yet been clarified.
and other resources
S. Kishibe: The Traditional Music of Japan (Tokyo, 1966, 2/1981), pl.53
D. Waterhouse: ‘An Early Illustration of the 4-stringed Kokyū’, Oriental Art, xvi (1970), 162–8
F. Koizumi, Y. Tokumaru and O. Yamaguchi, eds.: Asian Musics in an Asian Perspective: Tokyo 1976, 187–9
O. Mensink: ‘Strings, Bows and Bridges: Some Provisional Remarks on the kokyū in Woodblock Prints’, Andon, xv (1984), 1–9
a Collection of Unique Musical Instruments, CD, King KICH-2030 [two Kokyū solos]
Japan: Music of the Koto, CD, JVC VICG-5358 [Kokyū with Koto]
DAVID W. HUGHES