The vocal part of Noh drama is called utai. It includes not only the melodic parts but the spoken lines as well. However, it is not an element confined to Noh drama but has been loved as an independent performing art since the Muromachi Period(1392-1573), and performance and appreciation of utai by itself has been held. Even today, there are strong devotees among the people, and this fact has become the basis supporting the continued existence of Noh drama.
Nagauta, long pieces sung with shamisen accompaniment, developed on a grand scale in the middle years of the Edo Period(1603-1867). Up until that time, the culture of Edo(present-day Tokyo) was an imitation of the culture of Kyoto and Osaka, but performers born and raised in Edo produced their own unique melodies and, based on their concerts, a culture came into being that for the first time could be called uniquely Edo. Originally, nagauta were created as dance music for Kabuki, but an outstanding feature is that they are rich in diversity, given that in their process of development they adapted words and melody of Noh chant, Kyogen, and folk songs. In addition, nagauta on occasion have become independent of dance and are performed as storytelling with only shamisen accompaniment.
Kouta is a kind of Japanese music handed down to today and features songs of humor and irony sung to shamisen accompaniment. Kouta ballads are derived from the little Edo Period(1603-1867) shamisen songs known as a short love songs(ha-uta), and they assumed their present form at the end of the Meiji Period(1868-1912). Today there are lots of needs of the schools and many lovers of kouta; it is also popular as informal entertainment at dinner parties. In addition, an outstanding feature of kouta is that the shamisen is played with the fingers, not with a plectrum.
These are performances with no fixed locale on roadside where a lot of people gather. They are performed either to receive donations or to sell things. Some of the traditional Japanese arts, like the naniwa-bushi reciting, first started from daidogei. It usually took a procedure of drawing people's attention by delivering a lively monologue in order to sell things at the end, and some, among those monologues, themselves had become the performance. Selling "toad's grease," saying that it heals chaps and cracks in the skin is a typical example.
Min'yo are popular songs born of the collective life of the common people. The songs often reflect life's emotions, regionality and so on, and have been sung and handed down by a lot of people for a long time. There are various kinds of these songs, including rice-planting songs(taue uta) sung when planting rice, tea-picking songs(chatsumi uta) sung when picking tea, boat songs(funa uta) sung by sailors while rowing their boats. They feature a beauty of high notes and delicate melodies. Flutes, drums, five-holed bamboo clarinets, and shamisen are used for accompaniment, and during the Bon Festival Dance(bon odori) the general practice is to form a circle and dance in a lively way together with min'yo. There are a lot of new compositions, and its contests on television programs are popular.
Doyo are songs created for children. Specifically, warabeuta are songs that children sing in their daily lives and that are handed down through their playmates. They resemble folk songs in that the lyricists and composers are unknown, and they became widespread spontaneously. The original form of warabeuta was probably established in the Heian Period(794-1185). Most of them have been sung in games like traditional Japanese handball, beanbag, rope skipping and hide-and-seek. In addition, there are many sung in connection with nature, animals and annual events. With the passage of years, song contents have changed, but the main characteristic, based on the traditional Japanese musical scale, has not changed.
It is also called Rokyoku. It is a uniquely Japanese performing art in which admirable stories and tragedies are musically recited with shamisen accompaniment. By especially emphasizing sadness and indignation, naniwa-bushi enacted prototypical sentiments of the Japanese people, like humane feelings and moral obligations, and spoke for the oppressed hearts of the common people. Hence, until around 1960 they had enormous popularity and, along with comic storytelling and historical narrative, were a popular amusement for the common people. In the long run, with the arrival of the television age, naniwa-bushi suddenly faded away, some of them even changing to become singers of popular songs. Even now, the word "naniwa-bushi-like" is used to describe people who prefer moral obligations and humane feelings over rationality. However, recently experimental naniwa-bushi works, that are not only based on moral obligations and humane feelings, are gaining younger fans.