Home › Glossary › Letter B

Biwa

Musical Instrument
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A Japanese short-necked lute used by blind minstrels to accompany epic narratives like the Heike monogatari

Detailed Definition
The biwa appears in poetry as a vessel of historical lament and oral transmission; its gritty, percussive plucking underscores tales of war and impermanence, and poets invoke it to connect lyrical voice with Japan’s warrior past, Buddhist transience, or the resilience of storytelling.
Example
Example in poetry:
The biwa’s strings “groan with the ghosts of Heike warriors”; In a tanka sequence, the biwa player sings of impermanence as cherry blossoms fall; The instrument appears as “the voice of blind memory” in a poem about oral history; A modern poem uses the biwa to bridge classical allusion with contemporary trauma.
Additional Notes
The biwa is deeply tied to Japan’s oral epic tradition, particularly the Heike monogatari, where blind biwa hōshi (minstrels) used its percussive, gritty plucking to narrate tales of war and Buddhist impermanence; in poetry, it symbolizes historical lament, the fusion of music and storytelling, or the resilience of marginalized voices—offering students a rich intersection of performance, memory, and ethics in lyrical form.
Also Known As
Japanese lute Heike biwa
Skip to main content