The Last Biwa Singer

A Blind Musician in History—Imagination and Performance

Hugh de Ferranti

• Publisher: Cornell East Asia Series
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781933947433, 9781933947136
• eBook ISBN: 9781942242437
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Biographies

This work is an exposition of the traditions of Japanese blind singers who accompanied themselves on the biwa, and of the complex identity of Yamashika Yoshiyuki (1901–1996), a man widely portrayed as the last such "living relic" of the medieval bards called biwa hoshi. The author draws upon approaches from Japanese historical and literature studies, performance studies and ethnomusicology in an examination of history, which yielded on the one hand images of blind singers that still circulate in Japan, and on the other a particular tradition of musical story-telling and rites in regional Kyushu, of representations of Yamashika in diverse media, of his experience training for and making a living as a professional performer and rituals from the 1920s on, and of the oral compositional process in performances made between 1989 and 1992.

Table of contents

• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures, Tables and Examples
• Notes on Conventions
• Introduction 1-18
• 01 Images and Histories 19-68
• 02 Biwa Music of the Higo Region 69-142
• 03 Imagining, Encountering and Documenting Yamashika 143-176
• 04 Tales in Performance 177-230
• 05 The Life of the Road 231-276
• 06 Blind Biwa Singers Forgotten, Remembered and Rehabilitated 277-286
• Acknowledgements 287-289
• Appendices 290-300
• Bibliography 301-312
• Index 313-320
• Cornell East Asia Series 321-324