Toragaku is a little-known and long defunct form of Japanese court music, which flourished in the Nara period (710-84) and for a short while thereafter, and which then disappeared, leaving few traces. This paper is the first to be devoted to it in any language, and the first discussion of it which is more than a paragraph in length. After a review of divergent Japanese theories concerning the origin of Toragaku, it is argued that it came in the first instance from Chejudo, the large southern island of Korea, but that it also contained elements which link it to regions in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. The names of its dances, and the fragmentary descriptions of them in the sources, suggest that it was strongly tinged with shamanism, but that it also drew on Buddhism and on traditions of Chinese court music practice. An Appendix discusses evidence for the music and dance of Dvāravati, which currently several Japanese musicologists accept as the source of Toragaku.