Rōkyoku

Rōkyoku (浪曲; also historically called naniwa-bushi, 浪花節) is a genre of traditional Japanese narrative singing. This genre is performed by a singer accompanied by a shamisen, rōkyoku became very popular in Japan during the first half of the 20th century. In modern Japanese slang, naniwabushi is sometimes used to mean "a sob story", since the songs were often about sad subjects. The stories were commonly about folktales and myths with themes of loyalty and human emotion.