Shujo Onie Fire Festival

Shujo Onie Fire Festival

February 10th was the Lunar New Year and on the 16th the Shujo Onie Festival was held to mark the occasion. It was held at 2 temples on the Kunisaki Peninsular and I was lucky enough to visit the one at Iwato-Ji. The action began after dark when to the accompaniment of ringing bells and blown conch shells pairs of accolytes ran down the hillside to where the mountain stream had carved a deep pool of water into which the men jumped.

later 4 huge firebrands, 4 to 5 meters in length, were carried down from the temple to a waiting fire where they were lit. Officially this is a buddhist festival at a Tendai temple, but historically its roots are in the unique form of Shugendo in this area.



Then the burning firebrands were carried through the torii and up the steps to the inner shrine area where ther e are caves where the shugenja practised shugyo and other buddhist halls where further ceremonies will take place..

The burning wood was followed by a procession of priests and musicians.

Later there would be much more..... demons (priests in masks) will be brought to life, perform some dances, and then beat all the onlookers with burning sticks. I believe this is to drive away demons and bring good luck for the new year. later still the demons visit all the houses in the community. Unfortunately it was getting late and I was finding the crowds too much so we left.....

Month of Little Sleep part 10

On Sunday 21st October we went to the Omoto Matsuri up in the small settlement of Yudani. It is a small settlement, getting smaller. Only 34 households remain and they are mostly old folks...... there are no kids. The Omoto Matsuris only occur every 7 years and are expensive affairs and only 34 families are left to fund it. It ended up being a fantastic night with all the hallmarks of a true matsuri.... friendliness, generosity, inebriation, humor etc.... I shot over a thousand photos but choose just a handful.....

After the initial rituals and ceremonies the first kagura was Shihogatame, a dance unique to Omoto Kagura but which is similar to Kamimukae in regular Iwami kagura.

At a usual ceremony there may be half a dozen to a dozen offerings placed on the altar, but given the importance of Omoto rituals there will be anything from 30 to 50 different items....

Possibly my favorite Omoto kagura "dance" is Tengai, unique to Omoto. I have seen it performed by priests and also by kagura dancers, but in my experience it is the priests who put on a more dynamic dance.....



The Ebisu dance was unique, for me at least, in several respects. usually Ebisu dances alone, or sometimes with Daikoku, and its usually just a pantomime with him throwing candy to the crowd and then catching a Sea Bream. This was the "complete" Ebisu dance with the first part danced by a dancer as a priest, then with Ebisu, and then finally the "usual" Ebisu dance. usually the fish caught by Ebisu is made out of paper, but here they used the actual fish that had been on the altar as offering to Omoto.

At 6am the final ritual/dance took place and this is where possession, kamigakari, will take place, if it take place. The rope snake representing Omoto is swung violently backwards and forwards by the priests. To the rear you can see the villager who had been designated to be the recipient of possession. kamigakari did not occur.

Month of Little Sleep part 9

Past midnight and the inevitable Iwato was performed. It is one of my least favorite dances, but the last sequence after Amaterasu has been brought out of the cave and the assembled kami celebrate is performed with gusto by 8-beat groups such as Tanijyugo, and it gets quite frenetic with much leaping about.

Then onto Jinrin with the usual spectacular demons entrance.....

Next up was a rare performance of Benkei & Yoshitsune. Benkei, the legendary and archetypal sohei (warrior monk) is waiting on Gojo bridge in Kyoto to challenge the next samurai who passes. he has done this successfully 99 times. A slight, young Yoshitsune comes along.

Yoshitsune had been trained in swordsmanship by a tengu in the mountains north of kyoto, and his acrobatic skill is too much for Benkei who after being defeated becomes Yoshitsunes lifelong loyal vassal.... a very similar story to Robin Hood and Little John....

next dance was Tenjin, the first time I had seen the dance this season. Sugawara Michizane, the hero,, deified as Tenjin, wears a mask uncannily like the Guy Fawkes mask in V for Vendetta, takes on his arch-enemy Fujiwara no Tokihira.

It was 2:30am, still 4 more hours of kagura to go, but I left to grab some sleep as the next day there was an all night Omoto Matsuri up in the mountains and I wanted to stay all night for that....

The Month of Little Sleep part 8

Last Saturday was the opening night of our villages matsuri and matsuri begins in the evening with ceremonies in the shrine. Most shrines do not have a resident priest, for ceremonies a priest comes in from a nearby shrine, but we do have a resident priest. Few people attended the ceremony:- a few of the kagura group, the village elders, and a handful of others.

Once the ceremony was over the braziers were lit, food began to be cooked, and people started to arrive and take their places in the shrine......

The first dance was the Bell dance, and strangely last week was the first time I remember seeing it for the first time and here it was again. The photo shows clearly how important the hands are in kagura dancing...

Next up was Shioharai, the Purification dance, by two dancers, and if you look at the dancer on the left you can see he is certainly not Japanese. he is an American musician who has been staying with us studying kagura and Omoto. We arranged for him to sit in on the groups practises and they suggested that if he practised he would be able to dance for the matsuri, so with a week of solid practise, extra lessons from one of the young group members, and some help from aneighbor who used to dance the Shioharai he was able to pull it off...

Next up it was the kids turn with Hachiman, and the young lad playing Hachiman was particularly confident and strong....

In fact all four kids did an excellent job so with such strong talent in the younger generation it seems that our villages group will continue indefinetley, unlike some villages who have no kids filling the ranks...

The Month of Little Sleep part 7

Last saturday the villages of Matsukawa had their matsuris, so we started out in Tsuchi, home to one of the best kagura groups in the area, and the teachers of our own villages kagura group.

The night opened with a ceremonial dance, Suzu Kagura, bell kagura. I dont remember ever having seen it before, and the two main sources on Iwami Kagura in English dont mention it, but those books were based in Hiroshima and Masuda and so dont know much of the detail of kagura in our area. The name of the bells that are used are kagura suzu.

Next the kids performed Shiobarai, the dance that purifies the space. Like everything the Tsuchi group does it was tight and fast,,,,,

Next up, Iwato, and while I find it one of the less interesting dances a few moments in this performance grabbed my attention, like when Tajikarao did some wild leaps in front of the cave.......

Around midnight we headed down the valley to the Suwa Shrine in the village of Kamikawado,... not so much a village rather a collection of farms strung along a narrow valley. The village doesnt have a kagura group so our villages were performing here...... Iwato, one more time.....

And one more stop on our way home at the shrine in Ichimura where the dance Yamato Takeru was underway. Ive always found this dance strange because it celebrates the defeat of local leaders by the Yamato, kind of like Native Americans or the Welsh celebrating their subjugation. So deeply has the national identity overidden local, tribal identities....

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...

Iwaishima Kanmai matsuri 2012

Went to one of my favorite matsuris 2 weekends ago, the Kanmai matsuri on the tiny island of Iwaishima in the Inland Sea off the yamaguchi coast. This young lady was one of the group of sanshin players waiting on the quayside to greet the flotilla of boats....

The two long rowboats returned to harbor after going around to the other side of the island to greet and escort the boats oming from Kyushu carrying the priests. The matsuri dates back to the ninth century and commemorates the time the islanders gave shelter to a boat from Kyushu carrying their kami back from the Kyoto area.

I guess there was less than a thousand visitors to the matsuri..... which meant the islands population had tripled for the day. The lone policeman didnt seem to have anything to do. The atmosphere was relaxed, friendly, and good-natured.

The islanders had made it a little more commercial this year. There were T shirts, books, and postcards on sale to raise funds to pay the fine slapped on the islanders for their acts of civil disobedience in interfereing with the workers attempting to survey for the planned nuclear power station a few kilometers away on Kaminoseki.

The matsuri takes place every four years and for the next three days after the marine procession kagura will be performed in a temporary shrine. For such an old, interesting, and fun matsuri why so few visitors? because there is no Shinkansen station nearby.....