Contextual Associations

The binzasara is a shaken idiophone of the Japanese people. Malm describes a particular context in which this instrument is used: the Snow Festival (Yuki Matsuri), a Shinto ritual performed in the remote village of Niino, Nagano Prefecture. According to De Ferranti (p. 52) it is also “used in remnant forms of Dengaku and some folk-dance traditions.” Hughes (p. 194) adds that the instrument is used in rice-planting music and as an off-stage instrument (geza) for rice-planting scenes in Kabuki plays. Groemer examines its use over time in dengaku performances at a Tokyo Buddhist temple. The binzasara and its sound clearly reference the religious and folk music domains of Japan. Recently, some cosmopolitan percussionists and hand percussion groups have added the binzasara to their collections of sound effects instruments.

Description

This binzasara consists of 108 (an auspicious number in Buddhism) thin, flat, rectangular wood (possibly cedar) plaques strung together into a tight row the ends of which terminate at wood handles (detail #1). The flat surfaces of the plaques face one another, and the binding cord that holds them together is threaded through two holes located near one of the short sides of each plaque (detail #2). Thus, while one end of each plaque is bound tightly to its neighboring plaques, its other end is free so that it can concuss against them (detail #3).

Player - Instrument Interface and Sound Production

The binzasara is held in an upright arch by its player, who grasps one handle in each hand with the tied ends of the plaques forming the outer edge of the arch and the free ends the inner edge (see Malm, Plate 8). The player alternately uses a staccato up-down motion of the handles to sound the instrument. (Hughes, p. 394) “The men dance to the ‘jat, jat,jat’ of their bin-sasara, always played three times and always left-right-left.” (Malm, p. 51)

Origins/History/Evolution

Groemer (p. 40) and Hughes (p. 394) both say that the Chinese paiban is the presumed ancestor of the binzasara. Illustrations of the instrument from as early as the 7^th and 8^th centuries CE suggest it consisted of only four to six slats; medieval period illustrations of the binzasara show that by then it included many more slats, similar in number to the example seen here in gallery #1. Its use in Shinto and agricultural rituals to accompany dengaku dances (themselves called binzasara) suggest it has been a part of the Japanese soundscape for some considerable time—in a written source from the year 1096 CE, reference is made to its use in the accompaniment of dengaku dances at a festival in Kyoto. (Groemer, p. 41)

Bibliographic Citations

De Ferranti, Hugh. 2000. Japanese Musical Instruments. New York: Oxford University Press Inc.

Groemer, Gerald. 2011. “Binzasara: Music and Dance at Sensoji in Edo/Tokyo,” Yearbook for Traditional Music 43: 37-61.

Hughes, David W. 2014. “Sasara.” GDMI v.4: 394.

Malm, William P. 1959. Japanese Music and Musical Instruments. Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company.