長唄

Nagauta ("long song") is a school of shamisen music centered on singers and the thin-necked shamisen. Established as kabuki music by around the early eighteenth century and developed chiefly in Edo, it appears both in full onstage ensembles accompanying dance and in offstage music that colours scenes and emotions from behind a slatted screen.

In plays such as Kanjinchō, the nagauta ensemble sits onstage as a pillar of the drama itself. From the nineteenth century, concert works independent of kabuki were also composed, and nagauta flourished as music in its own right.

Nagauta's full splendor can be savored in Kyōganoko Musume Dōjōji, the great dance piece first performed in 1753. Singers and shamisen players sit ranged in tiers upon the stage, and the dance of the shirabyōshi Hanako unfolds as one body with the music—proof, to eye and ear alike, that nagauta is no mere accompaniment but a leading player.

Kanjinchō, one of the Kabuki Jūhachiban, is celebrated as a masterpiece of nagauta, and the music is deeply entwined with the stage of the Ichikawa Sōke—Benkei's prayer and his leaping exit are completed by its sound.