Biwa琵琶 – It is an instrument of music, eloquence, poetry, and education in Japan. During ancient time, the biwa hoshi player helped others to develop and overlap with the performance in an evolution which made it very popular until now. Since the period of Meiji, Biwa reformed again that led to massive western modernization which included to extend into the area of art and music. Because of collaborative western efforts by Japanese biwa musicians, interest in this interesting instrument being revived. Many artists and performers today continue to use biwa in many way they want to. In addition, there are many types of biwa, characterised by number of strings, sounds it can produce, like Gagaku-biwa雅楽琵琶, Gogen-biwa五絃琵琶, Mōsō-biwa盲僧琵琶, Heike-biwa平家琵琶, Satsuma-biwa薩摩琵琶, Chikuzen-biwa筑前琵琶, and Nishiki-biwa錦琵琶. Biwa instruments have four or five strings. The first string is thickest and the fourth string is thinnest that creates different timbres when stroked from different directions. Also, different sized plectrums produced different textures, like, the plectrum used on a moso-biwa and the plectrum used on satsuma-biwa.
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