The Comparative Analysis of Sawari on the Shamisen

Abstract

The shamisen is a long-necked, spiked lute from Japan. Like its Chinese ancestor, the san-hsien, the shamisen has three silk strings and a body covered with skin. Because the first Japanese shamisen players were biwa players, several important changes were made. Players began to use the plectrum used for the biwa instead of their fingers to pluck the instrument and found that the snake skin could not take the heavy blows of the plectrum, thus cat or dog skin was substituted for the snake skin (Malm 1959:185). Secondly, because the strings of the biwa produced a buzzing sound, this twangy quality was added to the shamisen.1 The innovations made by the biwa players serve to distinguish the shamisen from the san-hsien as well as provide the two most characteristic sounds associated with the shamisen; the percussive sound produced when the plectrum strikes the skin after plucking the string, and the buzzing quality known as sawari. Sawari might be described as a buzzing sound produced on the first string (lowest sounding string) of the shamisen. It is not only an inherent characteristic of the instrument, but functions as an important factor in determining the quality of the instrument. Musicians make value judgments on the shamisen by listening to the sawari it produces. The very fact that a shamisen produces this buzzing sound is not enough-an instrument may overemphasize sawari, or it may not produce enough. Yet, when asked to define the basis of their judgements, the musicians find it difficult to answer. It is the purpose of this paper to attempt to define sawari; to give its physical description and its acoustical description, and to determine the comparative properties within the sawari upon which musicians seem to base their judgments in determining the quality of a shamisen. The production of sawari is accomplished by two steps: first, the first string is removed from the top bridge, kamikoma (see Figs. 2 and 3 for the names of the parts), so that only strings two and three rest on the bridge and are free to vibrate (Fig. 4); secondly, the area just below the peg box, aze, is carved out slightly to form an indented area, tani, and a ridge, sawari no yama. The first string, being lower than the other two strings, rests lightly on the sawari no yama (Figs. 4 and 5). This interference causes the complex vibration which is termed sawari. There are three vibrating lengths of string which contribute to sawari (Figure 1):