Kagura Continued

The full Kagura, 33 sacred shinto dances, were performed from 5:30 pm on Saturday until sunrise on Sunday, in a house in the Takachiho mountains. To get there, I rode over a gorge and up steep roads, steeped in lush green mountains. When I walked into the house, two middle-aged women were sitting in the corner drinking apple juice boxes. Two groups of older men were sitting around heaters, drinking sake. I saw ice boxes of food and sleeping bags in the corner, and I worried that I had only brought an orange and some coffee for the next 16 hours.

However, at 7 pm the juicebox ladies gave me an aluminum plate and offered Brian and me onigiri and inari tofu. The men in front of us tossed chicken and vegetables onto our plate with a flick of their chopsticks. As we shared food, we shared talk. The men in front of us had all (except one newcomer) been attending the Kagura dances for over ten years. They pointed to the glossy photographs that lined the walls and named who had taken each dynamic dance shot. Each man had expensive-looking cameras and seemed to be playfully competing for the best pictures. Brian showed them his almost-antique Leica, and the cameras were passed around and admired.

Regarding food, the Japanese share. Dinner, in the home or at a restaurant, is normally served family-style, as everyone takes a little bit of each entree. Even snack bags come with each candy/cookie individually packaged, since the pieces will be distributed to friends. In dance class, it is usual for someone to open a gift box of candy or their own box of cookies and promptly run over screaming "Kay-chan!" with the piece designated for me.

(On right: Example of girls who scream "Kay-chan!" and dance well.)

At 8 pm older men and women emerged from the kitchen, carrying wooden trays full of onigiri, plates of nabe-style vegetables, and bottles of sake. We ate, again. One man was careful to ensure that my sake cup was overflowing to the point that it spilt on the tatami floor.

About one-third of the way through the dances, the middle-aged men in front of us began tearing off white paper decorations and wrapping a coin in the paper. They passed me one of the bundles and made a motion for me to throw it at the same time they did, onstage while the dancers were performing. They chortled each time someone had to dash on and off stage to pick up the coins. They were sitting on a sleeping bag, while i was sitting just outside of it, on the tatami floor. One of the men motioned for me to take a sitting space on the sleeping bag.

I'm not suggesting that this is a grand gesture for me to move from outsider to insider status, but it does make me think of the juxtaposition of uchi and soto that is prevalent in Japan. Uchi is the inside space, and soto is the outside space. Literally, uchi can mean "house" or the pronoun "I." Soto means "outside," and the Japanese word for foreigner literally means "outside person." A characteristic of the pair is that uchi and soto are perceived as opposites. Maybe, in Japan it looks like this:

Uchi: Soto
Japan: Rest of the World
One's Personal Space: Other People

The people in our vicinity were aware of us and casually pulled us into conversations or actions involving the event. Around midnight four dancers brought trays of rice onstage and threw them on the ground. (I assumed as an offering to the gods.) One of the men gave me a few grains of rice and told me to keep it. I asked him what it means and he said, "Omamori," which means "good luck charm." I said, "I don't know what that means, but I'll put it in my wallet, OK?"

As it got later, my mind began to wander. It felt strange to be thinking weird thoughts at a religious ritual. Almost immediately after thinking this, one of the men passed me a beer and peanuts, soon to be followed by more beer. I allowed my mind to roam freely for a while.

Another meal of onigiri and tsukemono was served at 1:30 am. Afterwards, People began to pass out in sleeping bags. One man was using an empty sake bottle as a pillow. My notes at this point were composed of different colored pens and illustrations. I tried to stay awake, because the action onstage was becoming more interesting.

Two gods move through the audience, one acting as a bull pulling a plow while the other god whips it. A young god does a precise and pleasing dance with a hoe, testing the air with two fingers pointing skyward. Three of the dancers, wearing a woman's head cloth covering, walk onstage and gesture downward to imply planting. One purpose of the Kagura is to thank the gods for a good harvest and to ensure another in the year to come.

A god enters the stage with a large wooden dowel. He begins chasing a "woman" god and prodding her in the butt with his now-phallic dowel. One of the men in front of me cackles maniacally at each butt-poke.

At 5:20 am I surrendered to exhaustion and lay down in the spot where I sat. When I wake up, I was positioned butt-to-butt with one of the older men, sharing his covers. If I didn't have to use the bathroom, I would have pretended to remain sleeping in order to savor the old man butt warmth. It was very cold.

After the dances about Amaterasu were performed at dawn, the event concluded at 8 am. Then, they served breakfast - more onigiri, tsukemono, and miso soup. The vinegar and unusual flavor of the food had already upset my stomach, but the old woman serving the food would not let me turn down an onigiri with a pickled plum in the center. I ate two. Brian and I both looked and felt awful, and I called a taxi to take us to the bus station. Bus, subway, shinkansen, train - I slept the whole way home.

Kagura

This weekend, I skipped dance rehearsal at Kobe-Jogakuin and traveled to Fukuoka. I took the train and then the subway, so I could board this guy, the kodama. I learned something about shinkansen: first, the hikari rail star and the nozomi go about the same speed, but kodama is the local train of shinkansen, (SLOW).






I was visiting Bryan so that we could go by bus to takachiho, a small mountain town, where we would attend an all-night performance of the 33 sacred Kagura dances.

Geography Lesson:

In the graphic to the left, the Hyogo prefecture is highlighted in orange. Kobe is on its East side, and that is where I currently live. This prefecture, plus six of its neighbors (including Kyoto and Osaka) make up the Kansai region. In the map on the right, the orange highlighted prefecture is Miyazaki, where Takachiho is. Regarding islands, Hyogo is in Honshuu, and Miyazaki is in Kyuushuu.

How does Kagura fit this blog?:

I have not researched Kagura yet- I prefer to get down my initial observations, before I learn the textbook definitions. However, I have heard rumors.

Rumor #1: Kagura is the oldest folk dance of Japan. That said, it is like the mother of dance in Japan. Could I see kagura influence in works of butoh or Shimazaki-sensei's modern dance? What would the differences be? And just how did ancient dudes dance?

Rumor #2: Kagura tells the story of Shinto myth, including the creation of the world and Amaterasu's hiding in and re-emergence from the cave. I love narrative dances. They are satisfying for the watcher (because she gets a coherent story from the piece) and challenging for the do-er (who has to tell a story clearly through movement/gesture, a difficult language).

The performance was in a home in the mountains. The cab driver was willing to brave our horrible Japanese and converse with us. I asked if he has ever seen the kagura dances, and he said that he has been dancing them for the past twenty years. Impressive! I assume that you do not have to be a priest or serious religious person, but can participate in the dance as a hobby. He dropped us off and said something to a person in Shinto dress, and it seemed like he was vouching for us and assuring that we made it back the next morning. The man in shinto dress told us to "Douzo," and so we did.

After removing my shoes at the small foyer, I stepped into a large tatami room, with a room off to the right serving as a backstage and rooms off to the left for the kitchen and bathrooms. The space for the stage was demarcated by green carpet; decorated with hanging paper pictures depicting images prevalent in shintoism like the rabbit and the moon, boars, a torii, and the characters for fire, water, and wood; and lined on the wall-side by food offerings and a ledge for the masks to be placed.

A shinto ceremony started at 4pm, after which the dancers proceeded to the house. All of the dancers were men dressed in white kimonos, some with masks and some without. Their ages ranged from young teens to men in their 50's. They proceeded in a single-file line, with the wooden box (home of the god?) being carried on two men's shoulders. Observers were taking turns tossing a coin into the box and running under the box and back over. Bryan and I each took our turn making an offering, after which he said, "Now we are a part of it!"

The dancers formed a large circle outside and then inside, doing a slow and controlled step-together, step-together, that twisted the body in two curving arcs.

Circles were a major theme of the evening, both in formations of multiple bodies and in the individual's movements. Often, as they were tracing a large circle on stage, the players would carve semi-circles with their steps. Weighty steps made a semi-circle intention downwards as their knees bent and straightened.

During the first dances, the dancers always carried items in both hands: either a sword, bells, a white fan with the Japanese red sun on it, or a staff with paper on one or both ends.

If my writing seems distracted or terse, there is a reason - the dance started at 5:30 pm and continued, nonstop, until 8 am. If anything, I should be hailed for my bravery for attempting to recall the highlights of an experience both soul-shattering and uplifting. Normally I think performance writing should be in present tense, but this is in past tense. So there you go.

In the beginning, I was very attentive to the movement. The first dances were all men without masks, human beings, and they sang along with the beats of the taiko and the sound of the flute. The older men sitting in our area expressed their regret that we couldn't understand what the dancers were singing. "Zenzen wakaranai ne?" It seemed like the chorus of greek plays, because the men moved simply as their singing probably told the story of the gods.

Their movements were weighted, with the loud thud of the taiko emphasizing downward steps. At the same time, each step was controlled (so that the step lands softly) and specific. The torso was not absolutely vertical, but had a slight lean forward, mostly in the upper back. The body was one-piece, with no isolation of body parts outside of hand or head gestures, and it moved gracefully between neutral and lower levels.

Because of watching Richard Lomax's "Palm Play," a documentary made in the sixties about indigenous dances' use of showing or obscuring the palm and Lomax's reductionist explanations about the cultural significance of the gestural choice, I was curious about the use of the hands. In "Palm Play," Lomax briefly states how indigenous dances in Japan often conceal the palms in kimono, and then some explanation I cannot remember about what that means. In the first few dances, done by "human beings"(no mask), their palms are always hidden either by the object they are holding or in the sleeve of their kimono. Even when they were holding an object, most of their hand would be in their sleeve.

Due to the simple movement and hidden palms of these dances, it is a shock when the first masked man (a god) takes the stage and reveals his palm, fingers stretched, in a movement curving in front of his head. If the dancer is not purposefully showing his palm, it is concealed- often by holding the end of their sleeve in their palm, as in the picture on the left.

The character of the dancer completely changes when he is wearing the mask - he looks straight ahead into the audience, instead of looking a bit shy like the unmasked men. He moves his head in a primal and inhuman way, quickly and slightly inclining it from side to side. The dance was so viscerally exciting that the men around me could tell that I was jazzed about it . "Subarashii" one man commented to me, meaning "wonderful." When I sat down, another man informed me that dancing with the mask was difficult, because the dancer has no peripheral vision. I didn't even think of this trouble, as I was moved by the different energy and excitement of the masked dance. After each masked man did a dance, another dancer, biting a green leaf, returns the mask to the shelf behind the stage and does a ceremonial shinto clap and bow. The masks represent the gods and are the gods, and their essence seems to infuse the dancers when they wear them.

There is so much meaning that i do not understand. Different props and clothing accessories mean nothing to me. As does the painting on the ceiling, or the words that the men sing. And my own questions arise: why do many gods have blonde wigs? Why is this dance, including the roles of female goddesses, all danced by men?

As the night progressed, the dances of the gods became more energetic and the human being dances more repetitive. When it was almost dawn, the action on stage was recognizable: Amaterasu (in the picture below-right) performed a dance, and the story of her hiding in the cave was enacted. Her emergence from the cave was well-timed with dawn, since she is the sun goddess, and the world was plunged into darkness until she came out. I will research more about the stories and symbolism of the dances and make a Kagura Story post.

Watching the dances analytically fizzled out after about Hour Four. When there is over 15 hours of continuous dancing, who cares if their palms are showing or not? It's really not important. What is important is the community event centered around these shared stories and traditions. So, on to the next post, Kagura Community!

Hanaarashi

On a Saturday night in Kyoto, the three-person ensemble of Hanaarashi performed in the Nishi-factory Garden. The Garden is a performance space converted from a private home, located in the Senbon Kamidachuuri neighborhood of Kyoto.


Shortly before the performance, Beth and I wandered into a second-hand store and purchased an old-school gameboy for 300 yen from an old man who spoke the local dialect. "Okiini," he said to thank us, "nanbon," to ask us how much things were. He was prepared to haggle with us, an adventure I did not have time for, since we were looking for the Garden.


The entrance of the Garden was marked with an A-frame chalkboard and a lamp. I walked down a narrow corridor, which led to the entrance of the performance space. The space was a small square, with a light board in the back, then the audience, and then the stage.


The stage had black marley floors and walls of differently colored wood. On stage were a single goldfish in a tank on a table and hanging red orbs made of pipe cleaners and tinsel. The red orbs made the stage seem like a fish tank, so that the stage was a fish tank in a fish tank.




The house had tatami floors and zabuton cushions in the front row and living room chairs in the back rows. While we waited for the performance to start, a woman brought everyone a small cup of hot green tea.




When she retrieved our empty cups, she gave us a plastic sheet to cover ourselves with. Beth turned to me, and we pondered what sort of performance this would be anyway. Would there be hammers and watermelons, ala Gallagher?

The dance begins with the atmospheric tension and visceral fear that only Butoh can provoke. A woman in a red dress (I will call her "Red" from now on) is sitting in the traditional bent-kneed position onstage. We see her profile, and she is absolutely still. The room is quiet, until she releases a gutteral sound. She moves from this usual Japanese sitting position to something like the cobra, with stomach on the ground and torso lifted vertically. However, she drags her lower body like a fish on dry land. Her speed is also like a fish out-of-water, sometimes spasming violently and sometimes still. She makes her way over to the table, where she stoically unwraps and eats a small cookie. She watches the fish intently. Blackout. She exits the stage in the dark.

I fear butoh dancers while they are dancing in the same way that a holy person fears god. It's not an immediate threat: the holy person and I do not think that we will be physically harmed soon. But the "other" is so alien and supernatural to us that we do not understand them as beings and fear the possible knowledge of and power over us that they may have. At the same time that she is a god, she is a child who has just asked me why bad things happen in the world. This feeling shoots through me when Red slowly turns her face to the audience for the first time.

When the lights come up again, a lady in a black and white dress (she is now B&W) sits next to the table, where there is an apple and no fish tank. Her mouth forms an o-shape, and she moves it as if she were a fish. She points her feet and cycles her legs in a teasing manner. Her fingers flute over her body before slowly removing her top to reveal a red dress underneath. As music begins playing, she rolls the apple all over her body with pleasure, towards her mouth.

This introduction of B&W and her desire is interrupted by a curly head hanging upside down from the beam directly above me, a lady (now referred to as "Curly") looking at the audience with her teethbared, basking in some emotion that is the nexus of anger and delight. It kind of looked like the picture to the right, except real-life.

Meanwhile, B&W gorges herself in the apple by excitedly sucking on it, after which she exhibits dismay. She takes off her black and white dress to reveal the red dress underneath (she is shown in the picture to the left, borrowed from hanaarashi's website) and exits on her knees.

Curly descends from the ceiling beam via ladder and approaches the apple. She engages the apple, but in a different way. B&W is driven to experience the apple based on her inner stimuli; She focuses on herself, and how she feels when the apple touches her. Curly focuses on the apple and her curiousity of it- she tests how it looks in the light, how it smells, and how it rolls on varying parts of her body, such as on her arm versus in between her breasts. B&W returns for the apple, and she and Curly have a rousing apple fight, in which Curly breaks her fall on Beth's backpack.

In this first part of the dance, each character is introduced. Red is alone and unstable; B&W is sensual and in touch with her inner world; and Curly is adventurous and curious. They are all bound by eating and having a relationship with each other- these two things are not only needs, but they are inescapable needs. The title of the piece "Ningen wa tabezuni ikirareru hodo jiyuu jyanai" roughly translates to "Human beings are not so free that they can live without eating." We are trapped in these conditions in the same way that a fish is trapped in water.

As mentioned earlier, the fish imagery continues throughout the piece- B&W and Curly play with the floating orbs onstage and poke at the stage walls, the idle movement of fish in a tank. Red dips her head in the fish bowl. Both Curly and Red, at different points in the dance, crawl along the floor head first, in the same way that a fish initiates forward movement with its head. In one scene, the stage is completely dark except for a searchlight that Red wears on her head. As she moves, the light casts shadows of the orbs on the walls, giving the illusion of the stage being underwater (don't ask me how, it just does). After searching onstage, she stops at the fish tank. Red strokes the fish, grabs it, and slams it into her mouth. Immediately afterwards, there is a blackout.

(Picture borrowed from Hanaarashi's blog )

The plot onstage is the relationship developing between B&W and Curly. At first, they are forced to interact, because they both want the apple. They directly fight over the apple, then they both pretend that they do not want the apply and coyly offer it to the other. Ultimately, Curly chews up the apple, regurgitating most of it onto downstage center because of her rush to consume it. Their relationship should be over, because the apple is gone, but they return onstage. Both explore the stage. Curly plays with B&W as if she were a puppet, making her giggly like a Heian-period courtesan and say things like "what is hot inside of me! it is daimonji day." Curly plays ballet, B&W grieves to traditional music, and then both assume a wide fighter's stance while indescribable feelings and urges pass through their facial features. They do a rousing duet to mambo music and end the piece with a sentimental duet. Their interactions are based on play and artificiality. While considering the other, they feel many different characters flash through their faces. An interesting note is that both wear drab dresses with brightly-colored undergarments partially concealed. It could be suggesting that they play many different colorful characters in society while hiding their own color.

This poorly-done color metaphor makes me think of the book "Forbidden Colors" by Yukio Mishima, a prominent modern Japanese writer who influenced the Butoh's founder Hijikata Tatsumi. There is no specific connection of that book with the dance piece; however, the issue of true feelings versus outward expression is ubiquitous in Japanese society, and I feel like I run into it often in everyday life. To put it simply and linguistically, saying anything in a simple and direct manner is equal to tantamount rudeness.

Back to Hanaarashi, Curly and B&W's faces exhibit specific and rapidly shifting expressions. On the other hand, Red's face is a genuine human face, the face someone will only show you when you are close or lovers, the face of yourself when you accidentally peer into a mirror that you didn't know was there. It is the face that is outside of society. She moves from this neutral face to bouts of violence, flinging herself to the ground and eating a live goldfish. What does this mean? At the moment (interpretations often change with time), I feel like there is a carcinogenic absence inside of her, from which she feels pain and the need to fill it. The other two can live with only small bits of the apple, but Red eats both junkfood and a live goldfish. She listens to music on her earbuds and tries to dance, but no respite comes. She can only wail sorrowfully and pound herself on the ground. It seems like what she needs to live is human relationships, but it is not as easy to attain as a cookie.

At the end of the piece, B&W and Curly are reconciled and smiling gently. Red walks through the house and throws tomatoes onto the stage. She walks over to the table, where B&W and Curly just finished their duet, and throws the table over. Red hurls her body to the ground and yells. Blackout. The End.

In Hanaarashi's description of the piece, I understood one of the sentences to mean "We build human relationships while we eat." Basically, human beings are limited by our needs, which pull us together and allow us to survive, fascinated and propelled by the things which limit us. "The Winner" is probably Curly; she is the one who is motivated by external stimuli, appreciating the way light glints off of an apple or how the scene looks upside down from a ceiling beam or in a headstand position. Likewise, she is also the character who finally gets the apple, and in the puppeteer game, she is the one who controls B&W's speech and movement.

This is a simple rendition of the dance and its moral. The real value lies in the nuanced movements and masterful expressions of Hanaarashi, and the untellable truths that they told that night with their bodies. I'm not sure how much I understand Japanese, Japanese culture, or Butoh dancing, but I want to listen. Even after the apple is gone, I will come back on for the second act.

DOYA DOYA

On Sunday January 14th in Osaka, Shitennoji temple held its annual Doya-Doya festival, touted in English as the "naked festival." In the main event, two groups of loincloth-clad men parade to the temple and fight over amulets. Tracy H. was visiting me from Korea, and this was her last day in Japan party blow out.

The temple grounds were crowded, and everyone was vying for the best viewing spots. We found the best standing space we could and waited for half-naked men.

A parade of pre-school and elementary school-aged boys, shouting "Rashai!" marched to the temple with their mothers' help. They wore shorts and the crowd loved the kawaii factor. After they proceeded to the temple entrance and back, a group of moddle school-aged boys, clad in loincloths, came jumping, fist-pumping and screaming "Rashai!" as they paraded the same route.

The rhythmic bleating of whistles became audible, and soon two singlefile lines of loin cloth-clad men became visible. One line wore red cloth, the other white, and they hop-marched to the whistles. Their ages ranged from young adults to older men. As they passed, butt cheeks bounced in unison. The snake-like lines slithered through the grounds and to the temple entrance. When I saw them close-up, they were full of vigor, shouting and jumping despite the cold and almost full disclosure.

Once they reached the entrance, the following events were repetitive and ritual-like:
1.) Face the masses.
2.) Be doused with cold water by temple elders.
3.) Compete for amulets falling from the ceiling.
4.) Repeat.

While trying to get a better view, we ran into Kari and Beth, two students from Wyoming. Beth was frustrated that her camera lacked the proper amount of loincloth-glory. "They have to leave sometime. And we'll be there," she said, determined to head them off at the pass. Following her through the crowd, we were standing in the front row for the exit procession.

As the men passed, we got close and took many pictures. My goal, possibly obvious from my camera angle, was to obtain as many awesome butt photos as possible. When their flimsy loincloths showed more than they should, my reaction was to feel a little shy and embarrassed about going for butts. The men, however, felt no shame. They openly acknowledged us, smiling, and making the "V" finger sign for our cameras.

Being on display and photographed didn't seem to embarrass them. Instead, they were the powerful ones in this situation. They were proud of their manliness, the courage and virility that I suppose their participation in this event represented. Fat asses, little booties, old men butts - all were going for the new year's amulet.

Earlier that week on Wednesday, we went to a Shinto festival regarding the god Ebisu and good luck in the new year. We were browsing the food vendors, considering okonomiyaki, chocolate-filled mini pancakes, or fried sweet potatoes. The crowd bottlenecked, and we watched the procession that squeezed by. Smiling, waving young women, sitting demurely on wooden platforms carried by men, were paraded through the street. They wore make-up, fashionable outfits, and sashes that said "Miss ____." I assume that they were the winners from their neighborhood for some sort of beauty contest.

I don't want to go into an analysis of the obvious differences here. There is one event in which boisterous bodies are celebrated, and anyone can participate. There is another where few are chosen to demurely be carried as they wave and smile politely. Which camp am i placed in based on my gender, and how do I feel about that? Its an obvious answer that deserves a long discussion if I were to start it.

I wrote this during a break at dance rehearsal. The rehearsals now stretch from noon until 9pm, with a lot of down time in between. Writing in a notebook is like a Japanese girl attractor - I don't know what it is, whether it's because it is English or because it is something that separates me from the group - that makes them rush over and ask me what i am doing. "Is it homework? Is it studying?" and i had to explain to a few of them today that I was writing about Doya doya. "Why?" they ask. Well, I think it is relevant to performance studies and writings about the body, so I said it is kind of related to dance studies. To cross the language barrier, I put it simply: Why is it celebrated when men do this, but it would be completely inappropriate for women to do it?

Erika answered, probably carefully choosing vocabulary that I could understand, that men are strong and women are gentle. I asked her why. She said "I wonder why."