The Tale of the Heike (Heike Monogatari) has been called the most representative work of Japanese national literature. "The Tale" is at once a narrative of the downfall of a warrior clan, the Heike, who were the most powerful political force in the country between the 1150s and 1180s, and a collection of many tales about events and individual participants in the struggle between the Heike and the rival Genji clan, whose leaders established the military rule of the Shogunate in 1185. The approximately two hundred 'episodes' or chapters (ku) of the Tale had origin as oral literature, and are thought to have been performed with biwa accompaniment by professional singer-storytellers since the early thirteenth century. The musical performance tradition has been referred to by several terms, most commonly "heikyoku", "heikebiwa", or simply "Heike". From the first, heikyoku has been transmitted by blind musicians, and they have played a primary role in shaping the nature of its music. For centuries the Heike Monogatari continued to be experienced orally-through the medium of performance-rather than in written form. The heyday of the heikyoku tradition was the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when performances took place frequently in the mansions of the ruling samurai and nobility, and in major Buddhist temples and indigenous shrines throughout the country. At that time performers of heikyoku were able to establish a professional guild (za) called the Tôdôza. During the sixteenth century the artform diminished in popularity, and most blind musicians of the Tôdôza fumed to more contemporary forms of music, in particular music of the koto and shamisen, as a mainstay for their livelihoods. At the same time, the Tokugawa Shogunate utilized heikyoku as one of a number of forms of ceremonial music, and study of the narrative performance tradition was taken up by scholars, poets, and others, as an amateur pastime considered both elegant and highly intellectual. In this way, the tradition continued until the early Meiji Period (1868-1912), when the Tôdôza was banned by the new government. The transmission of heikyoku ended in most regions of Japan, but enthusiastic amateur players in the northern Tsugaru region and blind musicians in the city of Nagoya managed to maintain their performance traditions until the present day.

The music of heikyoku strongly resembles that of the kôshiki, a genre of Buddhist ritual recitation. The vestiges of a very old musical style are apparent in the way the voice draws out individual syllables, tracing melodic lines in prolonged zigzag shapes and hard-edged, terraced contours. In accordance with the narrative content, a number of formulaic melody patterns are deployed in variant forms and sequences that were once familiar to all enthusiasts of the artform. This compositional principle was inherited from heikyoku by musicians of the nô drama and the bunraku (puppet) and kabuki theatres.

The biwa used in heikyoku (called the heikebiwa) probably developed from that played in gagaku, court ensemble music of continental Asian origin. The form of the heikebiwa and some of its performance techniques are thought to have been based on those of the gagaku instrument. From well before the advent of heikyoku, blind musicians called biwa hôshi are recorded as having played biwa in accompaniment to oral narrative performance, and in documents of the Todoza it is claimed that biwa hoshi devised the instrumental melodies of biwa from solo compositions for the courtly biwa. While the performance style of the modern heikebiwa undoubtedly has been influenced by music for the shamisen (a type of lute, first played in Japan in the late sixteenth century, which subsequently became the foremost instrument of Japanese musical life until the Meiji Period), the earlier practice of heikyoku has had an immeasurable influence on all subsequent sales of Japanese narrative music.