Heikyoku
Heikyoku is the Japanese art of chanting The Tale of the Heike, the medieval epic of the Genpei War, to one's own accompaniment on the biwa lute. Blind monk-players, the biwa h艒shi, shaped the text over centuries, and the performance alternates heightened speech-song with stylised biwa interludes built from a small stock of melodic patterns. Its aesthetic is austere and declamatory, serving the epic's Buddhist theme of impermanence: the proud Taira clan's fall is retold as a sermon on the vanity of worldly glory.