Nihon-buyō

Nihon-buyō (日本舞踊, lit. 'Japanese dance') refers to the classical Japanese performing art of dance.

Nihon-buyō developed from earlier dance traditions such as mai and odori, and was further developed during the early Edo period (1603–1867), through the medium of kabuki dances, which often incorporated elements from the older dance genres.Although the term nihon-buyō means "Japanese dance", it is not meant to refer to Japanese dance in general, and instead refers to a few dance genres such as kabuki buyō, which are performed in theatre. Nihon-buyō differs from other varieties of Japanese traditional dance, in that it is a refined style intended as entertainment on a public stage.

The term buyō is a modern term coined during the Meiji period (1868–1911) as a term for "dance", and the writer Tsubouchi Shōyō is believed to have been the first to use the term nihon-buyō.Prior to this, dance was generally referred according to its particular dance genre, such as mai and odori. The term is a combination of the characters mai (舞), which can also be pronounced bu, and odori (踊), which can also be pronounced yō. Shōyō intended nihon-buyō to be a term for Furigoto Geki (振事劇), a form of dance drama in kabuki plays, but the term has now grown to cover several Japanese dance styles, including the modern dance form sosaku buyō. As a genre of dance that has multiple influences, borrows from many different dance traditions developed over a long period, overlaps with theatre and has many different schools, there is some difficulty in defining and categorizing nihon-buyō.