Koto

The koto is a Japanese plucked half-tube instrument, and the national instrument of Japan. It is derived from the Chinese zeng and se, and similar to the Mongolian yatga, the Korean gayageum and ajaeng, the Vietnamese dan tranh, the Sundanese kacapi and the Kazakhstan jetigen.The ancestor of the koto was the Chinese guzheng. It was first introduced to Japan from China in the 7th and 8th century. The first known version had five strings, which eventually increased to seven strings. The Japanese koto belongs to the Asian zither family that also comprises the Chinese zheng (ancestral to the other zithers in the family), the Korean gayageum, and the Vietnamese dan tranh. This variety of instrument came in two basic forms, a zither that had bridges and a zither without bridges.When the koto was first imported to Japan, the native word “koto” was a generic term for any and all Japanese stringed instruments. As the number of different stringed instruments in Japan grew, the once-basic definition of koto could not describe the wide variety of these instruments and so the meanings changed. The azumagoto or yamatogoto was called the wagon, the kin no koto was called the kin, and the sau no koto  was called the sō or koto.