What is the percussion instrument that always appears in Japanese movies?

The shamisen was introduced to Ryukyu from China during the reign of Gen Eiroku (around 1560 AD), and then entered the island of Japan via Osaka from Ryukyu. The name "shamisen" was given to it. At that time, the Chinese shamisen was originally made of snake skin to cover the ****ing box, but Japan could not find such a large snake skin to make it, so the early shamisen was made of dog skin and cat skin. Later, most of them were made of rabbit skin or artificial leather.

The shamisen is widely used in various Japanese folkloric performing arts (jigoku and koto are called shamisen), but as a musical instrument, it is divided into three categories: thin, medium and thick. The appearance and skills of the koto are similar, but there are obvious differences in the details of the construction and the playing range.

Tsugaru shamisen tsugaru-shamisen ("Tsugaru", i.e., the area of the Tsugaru Strait between Hokkaido and Honshu, Japan) is one of the most distinctive of the Japanese shamisen family:

It was born in the cold countryside of Tsugaru and touched people nowadays with its rugged and powerful sound.

It was born in the cold countryside of Tsugaru, and has touched the people of today with its rough and powerful sound. For a long time, there was no written record of this instrument, and it seemed to be a "wild" instrument with no official status. However, it was the Tsugaru shamisen that transformed the traditional shamisen's role as an accompaniment to the performing arts and developed it into a fascinating solo instrument.

In 1877, a blind beggar named Rintaro was given an old Yoshitake shamisen, and his artistic talent enabled him not only to change the shamisen's thin shaft to a thick one, "but also to round off the shamisen's thick plectrum as if it were a rice ladle," re-establishing the instrument's structure, and breaking with the common sense of plucking the shamisen at a single point to extend its range closer to the koto-ma. The most important feature of the Tsugaru Shamisen is that it is played at the same point as the Ginma. The most important revolutionary feature of the Tsugaru Shamisen is that ---- has brought about percussion-like playing from strumming to tapping with a plectrum. In addition, the unique technique of Tsugaru shamisen, which had been largely completed in the Meiji era, was combined with a strong left-hand glissando, and the hooks and picks of the plectrums, and so on, and made its way onto the Japanese stage. (The plectrums of Yoshitake shamisen are characterized by being long and thick, and instead of being thinly sliced in the front, they are a little bit angular like thick rulers, and the Rintabo rounded the angles off. The shamisen has no character, and the pitch is judged by the eye and the ear. It is played with a large plectrum, and occasionally with fingers, and is often struck against the body for percussion. Traditionally, the shamisen was played with the shakuhachi and the Japanese koto. Nowadays, it can be used as a solo instrument, as an ensemble, or as an improvisation with a variety of instruments.

Shamisen*** has a low volume of sound, and there are no fixed tuning rules, so it is a test of the performer's ability, so most performers have a high level of improvisation. Rentaro said a very representative quote: "Monkeys can imitate many things, so don't imitate - play your own shamisen."