Songs to Make the Dust Dance on the Beams

The Ryōjin Hishō (梁塵秘抄, Songs to Make the Dust Dance on the Beams) is an anthology of imayō 今様 songs. Originally it consisted of two collections joined together by Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa: the Kashishū 歌詞集 and the Kudenshū 口伝集. The works were probably from the repertoire of the Emperor's tutor, the aged singer Otomae, whose superlative mastery of the art derived from four generations of teachers.^[1][2] Only a fragment (about 10%) of this work is still extant. These songs were very popular in the 12th century Japan, but quickly fell into disuse in the Kamakura period.^[3]

Notes

1. Yung-Hee Kim (1994), Songs to Make the Dust Dance: The Ryōjin Hishō of Twelfth-century Japan, University of California Press, pp. 19–20, ISBN 9780520080669
2. J. Michele Edwards (2001), "Women in Music to ca. 1450", in Karin Pendle, Women & Music: A History, Indiana University Press, p. 36, ISBN 9780253338198
3. Earl Roy Miner, Hiroko Odagiri, and Robert E. Morrell (1985). The Princeton companion to classical Japanese literature. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-06599-1 (p. 221).