A variety of musical scales are used in traditional Japanese music. While a twelve-tone (dodecatonic) Chinese scale has influenced Japanese music since the Heian period, in practice Japanese traditional music is often based on pentatonic (five tone) or heptatonic (seven tone) scales.^[1] In some instances, harmonic minor is used, while the melodic minor is virtually unused.

Pentatonic scales

• Japanese mode: a pentatonic musical scale with the intervals of the scale a major second, minor second, major third, minor second, and major third
• Akebono scale
• Hirajōshi scale
• In scale
• Insen scale
• Iwato scale
• Ritsu and ryo scales
• Yo scale