When we say the Ancient City, we think of Kyoto. For a thousand years until the capital was moved to Tokyo, it served as the center of the Japanese culture as its imperial capital. As you can see from the fact that 20% of the national treasures and 15% of the important cultural assets are concentrated in Kyoto, it has been the city of creativity and culture since the Heian Era. As for the musical aspect of the culture, imperial music was developed based on the pentatonic scales that was quite probably imported from China, then re-arranged into Japanese style. This was to become the Japanese scale.

There is a variety of Japanese scales but the representative one is the scale that is called the pentatonic and it consists of the five notes, "do re mi so ra". This scale is often found in the traditional folk songs and children's songs, as well as in pops. An example is the "Sukiyaki song" that a great many artists have in their repertories. This contains a melody that is beautifully representative of the pentatonic scale. The reasons why it became a great hit in Japan and number one on the American Billboard must be that the sounds of the pentatonic scale are nostalgic to the Japanese and exotic to the Americans.