Gottan


The gottan, also known as the hako shamisen or ita shamisen, is a traditional Japanese three-stringed plucked instrument, often considered either a relative or derivative of the sanshin, itself a relative of the shamisen.

Differences

The major difference between a sanshin and a gottan is that the body of a sanshin tends to be made of a hollowed wooden cavity covered with a type of membrane, whereas the whole of a gottan – body, neck, and all – is made up of solid wood, usually of a single type, often Japanese cedar.
The gottan's musical repertoire is often light and cheerful, including many folk songs. Like the shamisen, it was used for door-to-door musical busking, known as kadozuke.
Often the gottan is compared to the kankara, an Okinawan instrument related to the sanshin, due to its relative inexpensiveness and ease of construction. The equivalent all-wood Okinawan instrument is the ita sanshin.