During the first days of the year in Japan, a particular sound can drift through television broadcasts, public spaces, and the grounds of shrines: sustained tones, a piercing reed instrument, and a flute moving through a texture unlike that of a Western orchestra. You may have heard it without knowing its name. One of the pieces most closely associated with this sound is Etenraku (越天楽, also written 越殿楽), a work from the centuries-old tradition of Japanese court music known as gagaku. Here is how to recognize it, what to listen for, and why it has become so familiar around New Year in Japan. Contents
Not every piece heard at Japanese New Year is Etenraku. Another familiar sound is the koto, a long Japanese zither. Among the pieces associated with the season are Haru no Umi (“The Sea in Spring”), composed in 1929 by Michio Miyagi for koto and shakuhachi (bamboo flute), and the older koto works Rokudan no Shirabe and Chidori no Kyoku. Miyagi’s Sakura Hensōkyoku (“Sakura Variations”), from 1923, belongs to yet another period and style.
Rokudan no Shirabe is traditionally attributed to Yatsuhashi Kengyō, although questions about its origins remain; Chidori no Kyoku was composed by Yoshizawa Kengyō. These are not compositions by Michio Miyagi. The distinction matters because the music we associate with a single season actually comes from different centuries, traditions, and combinations of instruments.
But when you hear the unusually blended sound of the shō, hichiriki, and ryūteki, you may be listening to gagaku—and perhaps to Etenraku.
Etenraku is one of the best-known pieces of gagaku. The two Japanese spellings 越天楽 and 越殿楽 are both read Etenraku. The version most often encountered today is Hyōjō Etenraku, the piece in the hyōjō mode.
Gagaku is not a single style or a single ancient composition. It encompasses court music and dance traditions shaped through exchanges with mainland Asia, alongside earlier Japanese song and dance practices. The Imperial Household Agency explains that this musical culture had taken on much of its distinctive form by around the tenth century. That long history, however, does not establish an exact date or named composer for Etenraku. Its origins remain uncertain.
The instrumental performance most listeners recognize belongs to kangen, gagaku's ensemble music. Gagaku also includes bugaku, dance accompanied by music, but the standard instrumental Etenraku is not itself a dance piece. Knowing this helps us avoid treating every image of court dance as an illustration of the music being played.
The best introduction is to hear the music. This performance excerpt comes from Reigakusha, an ensemble dedicated to both classical gagaku and new works. You do not need to understand the modes or the notation before listening. Simply notice how several different kinds of sound share the same span of time.
Video: Reigakusha, “Hyōjō Etenraku” (performance excerpt). If the player cannot load, follow the link to YouTube.
Try listening without searching for a single lead instrument. A phrase may be present in several forms at once: a forceful melodic voice, a flute passing around it, and a sustained chordal background. The music is not necessarily moving towards a dramatic climax. Its changing layers can be the experience in themselves.
A kangen ensemble includes winds, plucked strings, and percussion. Beyond the three wind instruments discussed below, gaku-biwa (lute), gaku-sō (zither), and percussion such as kakko, taiko, and shōko are part of the musical fabric. The precise texture depends on the ensemble and performance context.
The hichiriki is a short, double-reed wind instrument. Its concentrated sound can stand out immediately, even within a large ensemble. If you are trying to follow the principal melodic movement of Etenraku, it is a useful place to begin. The expressiveness comes not only from which note is played, but from how it is approached and shaped.
The shō is a mouth organ made from a cluster of bamboo pipes. It creates distinctive chords that seem to hang in the air around the other instruments. Listeners sometimes describe its sound in terms of light or space; that is an image, rather than a fixed historical meaning. For me, what matters is how the sustained tones change our sense of musical time.
The ryūteki is a transverse bamboo flute. Its line may weave around the more forceful presence of the hichiriki rather than tracing exactly the same path. When these voices coexist without behaving like a single unison melody, the ensemble takes on its characteristic depth.
Was Etenraku composed specifically for the New Year? There is no sound basis for stating that it was. Its origins are the subject of different traditions and interpretations, and the exact history of its later use as familiar New Year music is not explained by a single definitive account.
What we do know is that Etenraku became one of the most widely recognized melodies in gagaku, and that its musical life extended beyond court performance. Its unmistakable sonority evokes ceremony, continuity, and the atmosphere of a new beginning for many listeners. As a composer, I think familiarity also plays a part: the more often we hear a particular piece at a particular time of year, the more deeply the two become connected in our memory.
This is an interpretation of how musical associations develop, not a claim that historical documents prove one exclusive reason for choosing the piece at New Year. In fact, it invites a more interesting question: how does a piece of music come to feel like the sound of a season?
Etenraku survives in three related chōshi (modal frameworks): Hyōjō Etenraku (平調越天楽), Ōshikichō Etenraku (黄鐘調越天楽), and Banshikichō Etenraku (盤渉調越天楽). The familiar New Year sound is most often associated with the hyōjō version.
These should not be understood simply as one Western-style tune transposed into three different keys. In gagaku, the practice called watashimono involves transferring a piece into another modal framework, often changing the melodic outline and the way individual instruments relate to one another. The National Theatre's Cultural Digital Library explains that the hyōjō melody differs markedly from the other two and that aspects of the relationships between the versions remain unclear.
If you know only one version, start with Hyōjō Etenraku. If your interest grows, the three forms offer a fascinating way to hear how musical identity can persist even as a melody changes. The National Theatre's explanation of watashimono (Japanese) is an excellent further resource.
The melody of Etenraku did not remain confined to instrumental court music. During the Heian period, versions of the melody were sung with new words in a genre known as Etenraku imayō. The melody later travelled through regional song traditions, including Chikuzen imayō, and became connected with the well-known Fukuoka folk song Kuroda Bushi.
The National Theatre describes Kuroda Bushi as one of the songs descended from this process of setting new words to the Etenraku melody. This is a reminder that traditional music has never existed only as something to preserve unchanged. A musical idea can pass between people, places, and ways of performing, acquiring new meanings along the way.
The twentieth-century composer and koto player Michio Miyagi also created Etenraku Hensōkyoku (“Etenraku Variations”) in 1928. The piece is another example of how the classical repertoire has offered material for later artistic exploration.
After listening to the musical layers, you might enjoy watching how the players sit and move as an ensemble. Reigakusha's 360-degree recording, produced with the cooperation of the National Theatre and KDDI, offers a different view of the instruments and performers. On a compatible device, you can move the point of view around the musicians.
Video: Reigakusha, “Etenraku” (360-degree performance). The viewing experience depends on your device and browser.
What draws me back to gagaku is not only its extraordinary history. It is the experience of different sounds existing together, each retaining its own character. An ensemble can feel layered rather than perfectly aligned, as though the music leaves space for things that cannot be reduced to a single intention or a single emotional message.
Birds do not sing for human enjoyment, nor does the wind blow to please us. We hear and interpret those sounds from our own point of view, yet the world is full of other ways of sensing and using sound. That thought shapes the way I listen to music, and it is part of what I find so compelling about gagaku.
This is my contemporary response as a composer, not a historical explanation of what the original creators of Etenraku intended. The distinction matters. We can study the history of a tradition carefully while also allowing it to ask new questions of us today.
For a more accessible introduction to these ideas, watch my discussion of the “seven mysteries” of gagaku on Hobonichi School's YouTube channel (in Japanese). It explores the music's unusual approach to notation, ensemble playing, and sonic texture.
Preserving a tradition and creating something new need not be opposing activities. My own work begins with attentive listening to the character of gagaku—its sense of time, the way its instruments breathe, and the complex spaces that appear between individual sounds. I then explore what happens when those qualities encounter string instruments, piano, and other sound worlds.
One result is my 2025 album TOKOYO (常世). It is not an arrangement of Etenraku. Rather, it is a separate body of music shaped by questions that listening to gagaku has opened for me. The aim is not to make traditional music more palatable by dressing it in familiar orchestral colors; it is to let different musical sensibilities coexist without losing what makes them distinct.
You can listen to the complete album below. You may find that hearing Etenraku first changes the way you listen to the sustained tones, silences, and overlapping musical gestures in TOKOYO. Or you may hear something entirely different. Both are valid ways in.
Taro Ishida — TOKOYO (Full Album | Official Audio), released in 2025.
If you would like to explore the broader landscape of Japanese music, our guide to 15 traditional Japanese music styles, with performances is a companion to this article. You can also begin with What Is Gagaku?.
On my YouTube channel, I share performances and recordings alongside conversations about Japanese music, musical instruments, cultural history, and the questions that music raises about nature and human experience. There are also radio-style talks and glimpses into the process of making new work.
If Etenraku has made you curious to hear more, visit Taro Ishida's YouTube channel. You are very welcome to subscribe if these explorations resonate with you. The aim is not simply to learn names and dates, but to keep discovering new ways to listen.
Perhaps the next time you hear Etenraku at New Year, the sound will feel at once familiar and newly alive.
Imperial Household Agency — Gagaku (Japanese): history, musical forms, and instruments.
National Theatre, Cultural Digital Library — Etenraku (Japanese): the three versions, the uncertain origins, and its place in the kangen repertoire.
National Theatre — Modal transformation (watashimono) and Etenraku imayō and Kuroda Bushi (both in Japanese).
National Theatre — Koto repertoire (Japanese) and Miyagi Michio's official site (Japanese): identification and dating of related koto music.
Reigakusha — Classical repertoire and videos (Japanese) for the featured performances. Read the Japanese version of this article.
