Traditional japanese music

Traditional Japanese music or 邦楽 (hōgaku), meaning literally (home) country music (as opposed to 洋楽 (yōgaku) - Western music) is the folk or traditional music of Japan. Japan's Ministry of Education classifies Hōgaku as a category separate from other traditional forms of music, such as Gagaku (court music) or Shōmyō (Buddhist chanting), but most ethnomusicologists view Hōgaku, in a broad sense, as the form from which the others were derived . Outside of ethnomusicology, however, Hōgaku usually refers to Japanese music from around the 17th to mid 19th century. Within this framework, there are three types of traditional music in Japan: theatrical, court music (called gagaku), and instrumental.