What type of “Japanese folk music” is ‹Making of a Cyborg› from Ghost in the Shell?
It's well-known by now that this haunting tune uses the uniquely crunchy Bulgarian style of folk choir, which leverages to great effect the “dissonant” intervals avoided by classical choirs (see this analysis by Wym). Japanese folk music doesn't really do harmony,¹ so the basic recipe here was to write a premodern Japanese-style song, then blend it with Bulgarian-style chanting. But—which “Japanese style”? Ohayashi? Jiuta? Joruri? Enka?
Anglosphere websites often mention “min'yō”, but the chant doesn't sound anything like min'yō at all, in style, musical structure, or mood (compare). I think this is a misinterpretation of the character 謡 (it's used for more things than min'yō, people; if he meant min'yō he'd say “min'yō”). Another common claim is that it's an ancient wedding song. But the lyrics were written by the anime composer (in Old Japanese), and wedding songs aren't really a thing. This is probably a misunderstanding of the song being written in ancient language and being conceived as a “marriage of human and machine”. The song itself isn't ancient.
From the composer I only found vague mentions of it being written “in a Japanese key” (which might be a mistranslation of 調, mode/scale).
I tried solfège'ing it to a tuner, and I made the discovery that I can't solfège worth a damn. Then I remembered Musescore exists. If we can trust user tuliusdetritus' transcription, we're getting CDEF#GAB, which I suppose could be ichikosuchō—a mode from gagaku, not really folk music but sophisticated court classical, based on Chinese classical. Here's an example of ichikosuchō:
The (absence of) rhythm, the percussion and the overall mood makes me think of noh music (hayashi)—compare—which is also suggested by the character used to describe it (謡 rather than 歌 is used in the noh world). And the chimes used in the percussion are probably an allusion to the sacred bells used in Kagura dancing.
So my best guess for Ghost in the Shell’s Making of a Cyborg is:
- An imaginary wedding song
- With lyrics in 8th-century Old Japanese, in the mode of Nara-period folk poetry
- Recited in the traditional way to read poetry, as in e.g. hyakunin-garuta
- And set to sophisticated, eerie minimalistic theatrical music
- In a scale/mode from classical Sino-Japanese court music
- Accompanied by shintō purification bells
- And sang in three voices with dissonant harmonies in the manner of Bulgarian folk music.
Footnotes:
1) Buddhist chants (shōmyō) do have harmony, but I consider this to be an imported style in Japan, like Chinese or modern Western music.