Min'yō

The songs found in the far northern island of Hokkaidō and sung by the Ainu people are usually excluded from the category of min'yō.

[2] In the far south, (especially Okinawa) distinct genres of min'yō, differing in scale structure, language and textual forms, have developed as well.

[3] Most Japanese folk songs related to work were originally sung unaccompanied, either solo, or by groups (heterophonically).

Some songs exhibit the same sort of "call and response" chant often seen in the Southern Black music of the United States.

[7] At the same time, in contrast to the "stage min'yō" of such professionals, many hundreds of "preservation societies" (hozonkai) have been established to help songs survive in their more traditional forms.

These are Western-style songs, often guitar-accompanied and generally recently composed, of the type associated with Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary and the like, and popular in Japan since the 1960s.

For that reason, min'yō is considered a calque of the German word Volkslied (folk song), after the Meiji Restoration followed by the Westernization of the music.