Crossword clues for biwa
Wiktionary
n. A pear-shaped plucked lute used in the classical and traditional music of Japan.
Wikipedia
The is a Japanese short-necked fretted lute, often used in narrative storytelling. The biwa is the chosen instrument of Benten, goddess of music, eloquence, poetry, and education in Buddhism.
It arrived in Japan in two forms. Since that time, the number of biwa types has more than quadrupled. Guilds supporting biwa players, particularly the biwa hoshi, helped proliferate biwa musical development for hundreds of years. Biwa hōshi performances overlapped with performances by other biwa players many years before heikyoko and continued until today. This overlap resulted in a rapid evolution of the biwa and its usage and made it one of the most popular instruments in Japan.
Yet, in spite of its popularity, the Onin War and subsequent Warring States Period disrupted biwa teaching and decreased the number of proficient users. With the abolition of Todo in the Meiji period, biwa players lost their patronage.
Furthermore, reforms stemming from the Meiji Restoration led to massive, rapid industrialization and modernization. Japan modeled its development on Europe and the US, praising everything Western and condemning everything native. Traditions identifiably Japanese became associated with terms like backwards or primitive. Such associations even extended into areas like art and music, and the biwa.
By the late 1940s, the biwa, a thoroughly Japanese tradition, was nearly completely abandoned for Western instruments; however, thanks to collaborative efforts by Japanese musicians, interest in the biwa is being revived. Japanese and foreign musicians alike have begun embracing traditional Japanese instruments, particularly the biwa, in their compositions. While blind biwa singers no longer dominate the biwa, many performers continue to use the instrument in traditional and modern ways.
The biwa is a Japanese short-necked fretted lute.
Biwa may also refer to:
- Biwa, Shiga, a town in Shiga Prefecture, Japan
- Biwa trout, an anadromous fish in the salmon family enzootic to Lake Biwa
- Eric Biwa, a former Namibian politician
- Lake Biwa, a lake in Shiga Prefecture, Japan
- Loquat or biwa, a fruit tree in the subfamily Maloideae of the family Rosaceae, indigenous to southeastern China
Usage examples of "biwa".
The biwa is played with a kind of plectrum, called bachi, usually made of horn.
Tameyoshi had planned, should the coup fail, to reach the eastern side of Mount Hiei and cross Lake Biwa to Omi, on the opposite shore.
Mount Hiei, and go to the towns of Otsu and Sakamoto on Lake Biwa in search of Tameyoshi and his sons and arrest them.
Mino on the farther side of Lake Biwa were Genji who would give him shelter and assistance.
Yoshitomo made his way through the hills to Lake Biwa, Vice-Councilor Nobuyori, prime agent in the plot to snatch power from Kiyomori, escaped to Ninna-ji Temple, north of the city gates, where nearly fifty of his fellow noblemen and courtiers had already taken refuge.
September he reached the southern end of Lake Biwa, where a vessel was about to set sail for the western shore.
He noticed that the boat was midway across Lake Biwa, and that the peaks of Mount Hiei were beginning to tower above it.
He was sure that these were pilgrims on their way from the region of Lake Biwa, or from Tamba, so he set out to meet them.
After serving in his youth as a samurai retainer, Toju denounced the rigidities of such service and retired at the early age of twenty-six to a life of study and contemplation at his birthplace on Lake Biwa in Omi Province.
Its shops and inns clung so closely to the shore of Lake Biwa that the masts of the fishing smacks, the pleasure boats, and the ferries beached there seemed to sprout from thatched roofs.
Lake Biwa, Cat and Hanshiro left their own calligraphy brushes in the earthenware container full of those left by worshipers.
He had told her that if she rowed in a washtub across Lake Biwa seven nights in a row, he would give in to her desires.
Having heard of your skill in reciting the story of the battle, he now desires to hear your performance: so you will take your biwa and come with me at once to the house where the august assembly is waiting.
Hoichi donned his sandals, took his biwa, and went away with the stranger, who guided him deftly, but obliged him to walk very fast.
Then Hoichi lifted up his voice, and chanted the chant of the fight on the bitter sea,-- wonderfully making his biwa to sound like the straining of oars and the rushing of ships, the whirr and the hissing of arrows, the shouting and trampling of men, the crashing of steel upon helmets, the plunging of slain in the flood.