The Month of Little Sleep part 5

Wednesday night was Omoto Matsuri up in Nakano. Honoring the local kami Omotojin, these matsuris only take place, in the villages that still have them, every six or 7 years and are therefore more important than the annual matsuri. The event took place in the shrines kaguraden, but the villagers had built a huge temporary shelter out of bamboo and blue tarps to keep everyone protected from the weather....

As we arrived the Iwato dance was underway....

After that first dance it was time for rituals and ceremony to begin and first the representation of Omoto, a coiled rope snake with red tongue was brought in and set on the temporary altar. Later the snake will be uncoiled and used in some shamanic rituals, and next day he will be taken to a sacred tree and wrapped around its base.

Next three priests conducted a purification of the space that culminated with the scattering of rice grains over the space and the audience/congregation.....

The other priests now entered, 7 in total, and they were all purified with the Onusa. The priests had come from all over the district. Most shrines do not have a resident priest, and the few priests that do live in the countryside are responsible for a large number of shrines. For Omoto rituals there may be as many as ten priests who take part.

next came the lengthy ritual of placing the offerings on the altar. Mostly shinsen, food offerings, but also other types known as heihaku. Compared to a more usual shrine ceremony, the number of offerings was quite large as befitting the importance of Omoto.

Next a series of norito were read to Omoto, after which the offerings were removed, rather more quickly than they were placed, and then Omoto was placed above the tengai to "observe" the nights dances and the altar dismantled so the dancing could continue.....

The Month of Little Sleep part 4

Around 2:30am the kagura group took a break, something I have never seen before. I suspect that as the village has shrunk, so has the kagura group, and fewer members means each must do more and therefore not get any breaks during the long night. The audience took the opportunity to pull out some food and spread out... All night long Mr Yama operating the barbecue grill outside had been passing free food into us.... fried noodles, barbecued squid, barbecued crab legs..... along with copious amounts of cold beer and sake, so we were full but could not refuse the offers from different groups in the audience who insisted we join them and share their food....this, for me, is the essence of matsuri....

After the break the action started up  with the Oeyama dance with lots of demons including the favorite of the audience, a junior demon...

The spiders web trapped the hero but he was of course able to free himself and kill the demon...

next up was Iwato, usually one of the first dances at a matsuri....

And then Ebisu, ably assisted by junior Ebisu, distributing lucky candy to everyone in the audience...

The penultimate dance was Shoki.......

Outside the sky was lightening and more people had been arriving...... in the countryside people get up at 5... and so it was time for the finale, Susano's battle with the multiheaded Orochi.... It was a small kagura group, so there were only four heads to the serpent, but even so they took all the dance space and spilled out into the audience. An exciting end to a great night..... time to go home to bed and rest up..... in 3 days it would be an Omoto Matsuri up in Nakano....

The Month of Little Sleep part 3

Sunday night was matsuri downriver in Kawahira, a village I always enjoy visiting because of the friendliness and genrosity of the villagers....

The hachiman dance was in full swing as we arrived around 11pm. Unusually, Hachiman and his aide were being danced by two young women. Girls and women dancing kagura is unusual. A few groups have started to allow girls to dance, but it is not the norm.

Even more unusual was the fact that these two young women were not from the village, they were not even from the area. They are students at the university up in Matsue and for the past year they have been making the 2 hour drive once a week to come down and practise in the village. They danced well and the villagers were very appreciative of their help in maintaining the traditions....

Next dance was Suzukuyama, a classic battle between the good guys and the demon.

Past midnight and the next generation of dancers and fans are still keeping up.....

Next was Yasogami, and extra long dance because of the stand-up routines and pantomime and slapstick. In this scene one of the brothers attempts to woo, unsuccessfully, the princess....

1:30am and Jinrin starts up....

The Month of Little Sleep part 2

Walking back from the matsuri at Ichiyama we stopped in at the matsuri at Kaewado. We got there about 3am.

The kenmai dance has just started....

Followed by a different version of Kakko.....

And then a really good version of Jinrin.....

The finale was Kurozuka with the demonic white fox.....

and the sky was lightening and time to wander home across the river....

The Month of Little Sleep part 1

For me, the month of October has to be "The Month Of Little Sleep". In our area the rice has been harvested and now it is time for matsuri, and around here matsuri means all night kagura. Every village has their own matsuri and there are some I try to visit every year as well as many I have not had time to visit yet.... the first for me this year was saturday night in Ichiyama...

Got there around 10pm and the Iwato dance was just starting....

Next dance was Hachiman with the almost obligatory demon/hero battle.... I keep rooting for the demons but they never win.....

Next up was a ceremonial dance, Kenmai, which means "sword dance" but involved no swords. It was seperated from the sword part of the dance which is performed at Omoto Kagura.....

Next up was Jimmu, a dance based on the exploits of the mythical first emperor of Japan who subjugated the various clans and tribes of Western Japan in his invasion from Kyushu to kansai....

Next up was Kakko, a dance about a comedic figure who steals a sacred drum and attempts to unlock its power.....

Around 2:30am,  we took our leave of the good folks in Ichiyama and started to walk towards home...

More information about these dances, including videos, can be found by clicking on the labels of this post...

Kawamoto Kagura Competition 2012

Last weekend I went upriver to the Kawamoto Kagura Competition. While I believe that kagura is best appreciated in a shrine, kagura competitions do offer another type of experience.... comfortable seats, good lighting, and a big stage which is more suited for the Hiroshima style of kagura.. Even though it was a secular event, the first dance is always the purification of the space, performed here by a group from Mitani.

Next up was the local Kawamoto group and they performed Akoden, a variation on the wicked fox transformed into a beautiful maiden. Though Kawamoto is in Iwami their group performs Horoshima style, with lots of mask changes etc. This was a rousing dance for the home audience with plenty of stand-up comedy, pantomime, and slapstick....

The Otsuka group from Kitahiroshima then did Rashomon, a dance I dont think Ive seen before that is actually the prequel to the more common Oeyama dance. Fast, furious, but ending with the demons escaping and so setting the scene for Oeyama...

Next up was the simpler 2 man version of Hachiman performed by the Mihara group. Mihara is a little up in the mountains near my village and Yoko works there. She is friends with Mr. Yamaguchi the group leader who dances the Hachiman part. At 70 years of age Mr Yamaguchi is certainly one of the oldest kagura dancers around..... though still spry and athletic.

My own village of Tanijyugo was up next with Jinrin,.... 2 heroes and 2 demons...

There were six more dances after the lunchbreak but I only stayed for one more, Momijigari, another Hiroshima favorite with many mask changes and 4 maidens who transform into demons.....

Kagura competitions have grown in poularity in the past 50 years and do offer the opportunity to see a lot of kagura in an all-day setting rather than the more intimate shrine setting of all-night kagura..... Most towns in Iwami and north Hiroshima now have annual kagura competions. The smaller towns without auditoriums will put them on in school gymnasiums....

Kanzui Matsuri part 8

This is the second half of a post on the Oeyama dance as performed at last years matsuri up in Kanzui, The first half can be found here.

The group of heroes dressed as yamabushi find their way to the demons lair and after convincing the demons that they are real yamabushi are invited to spend the night,

There are 4 heroes, and the boss demon and three aides, so a total of 8 dancers packed into the tiny performance space. The king of the demons is distinguished by his oversized mask.

The heroes share the drugged sake with the demons and when they are drunk the fighting begins, each hero putting paid to one demon.

The final scene is when the king demon is confronted by the main hero. But the demon has a trick up his sleeve,..... a demon spider....

I had not seen the spiderweb and spider used in the Oeyama dance before...

The hero of course defeats the spider and the demon and so the world is once again safe.....

It was now 3:30 am and the kagura would be going on for another 3 hours but I left as I felt I neede to put in an appearance at my own villages matsuri which was also being held this night....

Kanzui Matsuri 7

The next dance at last years all-night matsuri in Kanzui was Oeyama, a big production with an unusually large cast for a kagura dance so I will split it into two posts. the story is based on a Noh play of the same name which itself was based on a story in the Heike Monogatari. In the first scene the hero, Minamoto Yorimitsu, and an aide leave Kyoto on a mission to destroy demons that have been kidnapping and eating young women.  On the way they meet a tengu/yamabushi who tells them that the demon will not harm yamabushi so they should discard their armor and wear the garb of mountain priests. the tengu also gives them some drugged sake that will disable demons but not affect humans.

The next scene introduces a villager who works in the mountains as a woodsman.

The next scene introduces a princess who is found in the mountains washing bloodstained clothes in a stream. She was captured by the demons but her flesh was too tough and bones too large to be eaten so the demons kept her as a laundry maid.

She promises to guide them, now dressed as yamabushi, to the demons lair on Mount Oeyama.

Kanzui Matsuri 6

So, it's about one-thirty in the morning and the sixth dance of the matsuri begins, Daikoku and Ebisu.

There is not really a story, rather the two characters, both members of the 7 Lucky Gods of Japan, engage in pantomime.

Daikoku was originally a Hindu warrior deity, but in Japan by the 15th century he had become the jolly, pudgy character associated with wealth and good fortune. Hitting the people on the head with his magic mallet will bring them good fortune.

When Ebisu dances he often goes through the comedic routine of catching a Sea Bream.

Daikoku and Ebisu are often seen as a father-son pair through the association with Okuninushi (written with the same kanji as daikoku) and Kotoshironushi, seen as Ebisu.

What the kids in the audience have been waiting for is for the lucky candy that Ebisu throws out.....

Kanzui Matsuri 5

Suzukayama is another hero versus demon piece based on a Noh drama.
The hero is Sakanoue Tamuramaro who was given the title of shogun (barbarian defeating generalissimo) for his success in defeating the Emishi in eastern and northern Japan. I believe he founded the famous Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto.

There are many variations on the story, but this version seems to be based on the version of the story that has the demon being a "dog demon". Other versions have the demon being invisible.

The demon lives in a cave on Suzukayama which is near Ise. Apparently it was quite a dangerous place for travelers.

What is interesting to note is how halfway through the dance the upper part of the costume is undone and drops to act like a flared skirt during the spinning. Thois last photo shows some of the acrobatics involved in the fight sequences.

Kanzui Matsuri 4

Its just about midnight at the small shrine in the mountain settlement of Kanzui not far from my own village. The annual matsuri got underway about 3 hours ago and the fourth dance starts, Michigaeshi, a not very common dance. A few more people arrive and now the audience just outnumbers the dancers and musicians.

Michigaeshi is a fairly typical 2 person dance, the hero and the demon, although the ending is most unusual.

The hero is the kami Takemikazuchi, a complex deity with connections to thunder, military might, and protection from earthquakes in his home area of Kashima, Ibaraki Prefecture. He is also enshrined at the Fujiwara's home shrine of Kasuga in Nara where he is considered their tutelary deity. The Fujiwara ruled over the kashima area so either they adopted him from there or possibly brought him there. According to the Kojiki version of the Kuniyuzuri myth he was one of the kami sent to subdue Izumo, though Izumo records make no mention of him.

The demon is unnamed, though follows the classic pattern of being a flesh-eating demon harassing local villagers.

This third video clip shows the battle between the two. If you cant be bothered to watch all the videos, this is the one to watch.

The hero of course triumphs, but, in an unuusal twist does not kill the demon. Instead he offers him the possibility of redemption if he travels to Takachiho in Kyushu, site of the "descent" of the Yamato ancestors from heaven, and take part in the rice harvest there.

When I first came to Iwami and started watching kagura I remember several people telling me that this was their favorite dance precisely because the demon is spared and not killed.