A few weeks ago I posted on a small altar to Omoto in a neighbouring village and asked if anyone would be interested in seeing the shamanic kagura that is associated with Omoto. On person said yes, so this is for them. I apologize for the quality of the photos and videos. They are from twenty years ago.
Omoto is carried to the village shrine, a Hachimangu at the far end of the village. Omoto Kagura was introduced in to the area by yamabushi and they took the same form of shamanic rituals all across the country. I have found remnants of yamabushi kagura throughout western Japan and Kyushu, and am reliably informed it was also widespread in the north of Japan. When the yamabushi and their shamanism was outlawed in the late Meiji period it disappeared everywhere, except in this remote part of Shimane.
Omto is then placed on an altar in the shrine. The shelves with white cloth are for the offerings that will later be ceremonially offered to Omoto by the villagers and priests. I have seen the offering for normal annual matsuris, and for the Omoto rituals there are 3 to 4 times as many offerings.
Many shrines in the area do not have a full-time shinto priest, but for Omoto all the priests of the county take part. Omoto Kagura takes place either every 4, 5, 6, or sometimes 7 years, depending on the village tradition. A similar shamanic kagura takes place in Hiba, high in the mountains of Hiroshima near the Shimane border, but only every 33 years.
An altar is set up in the corner of the ceremonial space, under the tengai, the canopy over the dance area. I believe this altar is in the NW corner but I could be mistaken.
Masked, theatrical kagura is performed as an interlude while the priests retire and rest. This was the origin of the theatrical kagura now commonly performed. It was in between the shamanic dances performed by priests, ne shugenja.
More rituals, many involving a very large Onusa, a kind of purification wand, and then Omoto is taken dowm from tha altar and the priests perform Tsunanuki wherein Omoto is taken on a figure 8 route around the sacred area.
The video below is from a different performance at a nearby shrine on another occasion.
More theatrical dances and then my favorite, the Tengai dance.
The tengai is the canopy above the dance area and the streamers are what the kami descend through to animate the dancers in nornal kagura. For Omoto there are a series of boxes with scrolls attached within the tengai and the priests operate ropes that allow the boxes to descend and ascend.
As the dance progresses the boxes begin to swing more violently and by the end of the dnce ripped pieces of the tengai litter the floor. This is by far my favorite of the various Omoto dances and I am not aware of anything even remotely similar anywhere else in Japan.
Not all the kagura dances by the villagers are masked and theatrical. Some dances, called shinji, are ritualistic in origin and include several purification dances etc. Another is the sword dance pictured below.
As the night progresses there are several more masked dances and several more ritual Omoto dances like Yudate and the Mat Dance, my second favorite dance.
The final dance, just before dawn, is the Jyoju, and this is when possession is most likely to occur. Some villages have the tradition a villager is chosen, always a male, sometime before the festival and will undergo numerous purifications and preparation. many villages however just leave it up to the kami to choose who to possess.
Omoto is once again taken down from the altar and then suspended diagonally across the area from the Omoto altar to the opposite corner. The priests then start to swing the rope back and forth picking up speed and then slowing down. As with the tengai it gets quite violent and pieces from the tengai fall around. On one occasion I saw the tengai itself semi-collapse.
The next day Omoto, as represented by the new rope snake, will be taken to the altar behind the community centre and wrapped around the base of the tree. All across Izumo and the Oki Islands you will also find such rope serpents wrapped around trees.
This is just a very brief introduction. I have witnessed Omoto kagura numerous times and have an extensive collection of much better photos that I will get round to posting eventually....
From 6:30p.m. yesterday evening until 5:30a.m. this morning I visited the Omoto kagura Matsuri in the village of Eno.
Had a fantastic and exhilarating time thanks to the hospitality and effort of the villagers and dancers,... lots of free delicious food and sake!, and some great dances.
At some point I will post in more detail about the rituals and dances, but for now a few videos of the shamanic elements of the night.
A little after midnight a young villager gave a stellar performance of the Mat dance, Gozamai. The congregation/audience showed their appreciation at the finale for a great effort of an athletic dance.
Around 1a.m. was the Tengai dance. It still remains my favorite of all the Omoto dances. Unusually it was kagura dancers who pulled the strings, not priests.
Around 4a.m. Omotosan, in his form as the rope snake, was taken down from the altar and the priests and dancers performed the Tsunanuki, the Rope Pulling dance.
Following Tsunanuki, Omotosan is suspened from the Tengai canopy, and the final dance in the shamanic portion of the festival took place. Jyojyu is the dance wherein possession is most likely to occur. This year Omotosan chose not to speak.
Our next matsuri was in Eno, a small village on the Yato River. This was our first time to matsuri here. It's a fairly new shrine, established under the orders/instructions of Omotojin during shamanic possession at Omoto kagura across the river in Ichiyama. Next month there will be Omoto Kagura here.
The matsuri was well attended! After sitting down we were given 2 steaming bowls of wild boar stew, and later warmed Omiki, the sacred sake. :)
The first dance after the ceremonial dances (shinji) was Iwato.
Something I've never seen before in performances of Iwato was that during Uzume's dance the other "kami" joined in playing the intruments.
Playing before the home crowd is always tough as locals are the toughest critics.
The next dance was Yumi Hachiman with the usual spectacular demons entrance. Around midnight we had to leave as there were 2 more matsuris to visit this night.
One of the things that attracts me to Iwami kagura is the sheer dedication and professionalism of the dancers, though in fact there are no professionals, they are all amateurs.
These shots are of my friend Tetsuhide dancing the purification dance as part of last years Omoto Kagura at Ichiyama.
He's been dancing kagura for over 40 years, and all three of his sons are also kagura dancers. During the week he is a travelling salesman, and on the weekends he helps out in his families business, the village liquor store.
Kagura is performed primarily as entertainment for the kami, but in one sense the dancer also becomes the kami. The dancers hold various kinds of torimono, objects into which the kami descend. For this dance he is using a fan and a large nusa, a type of ceremonial wand.
The regular purification dance with 4 dancers was performed before this one, which is specific to Omoto.
Outside of my local area, Iwami, it is rare to find anyone who knows what kagura is, and yet it is the root of Noh, Kabuki, and other performing arts in Japan.
This short video is from my favorite of all the Omoto Kagura dances. The tengai is the canopy above a kagura performance space. The kami descend through the colored paper streamers and into the dancers.
The tengai dance is unusual in that it is not humans who dance, but the tengai itself. I have not come across anything like this anywhere else in japan, and I have a lot more research to do to understand it.
For Omoto kagura there is a somewhat different tengai, among the paper streamers are lantern/box like structures.
The boxes are connected by ropes to the priests who sit at the side of the area.
Before the dance begins long streamers inside the boxes are unfurled and hang down. I suspect the writing on them has daoist or esoteric buddhist meaning, as Omoto Kagura was brought to this area by Yamabushi of Shugendo.
The dance begins slowly with the boxes being lowered and raised slowly, gradually the tempo increases and then lateral movement, swinging, and twisting all begin. As with normal kagura, at times audience members or musicians will shout when a particularly fine sequence of movements are executed.
I've seen the Tengai dance performed by 3 priests, and once by only 2 priests, and was stunned by the intricacy and complexity of the movements created.
It is believed that the root of Japanese religion, AND the root of Japanese performing arts lie in shamanic trance. Shamanic kagura was once commonplace throughout Japan, but was suppressed by the Meiji government. Only one place in Japan still has traditional shamanic kagura and that happens to be the place I live. I will be posting a lot more on this subject as it is the focus of a lot of my research and there is almost nothing on it in English.
The focus of Omoto kagura is Omoto, or Omotojin, the local land-based kami. Up in Izumo it is called Kojin, and like Omoto is represented as a rope snake. There are about 60 sites in my area that are considered Omoto shrines, though only a few have shrine buildings. Omoto kagura is practised at a handful of shrines, each shrine working to a 5, 6, or 7 year cycle, so some years there is no Omoto kagura , some years several performances.
Omoto kagura is performed by priests, and in fact all the priests of the county take part. As in the old days, the villagers perform theatrical kagura during the intervals between the priests various dances.
The supreme importance of Omoto kagura to the area is indicated by the number of offerings on the altar. I counted more than 40 different things on the altar at this performance in Ichiyama, compared with less than a dozen at a normal ceremony.
The dance in the video is called Tsunanuki (rope-pulling) and is probably the most well known of the various dances. If an Omoto kagura is successful then someone will be possessed by Omotojin and will answer questions by the priests usually on such matters as the coming years agricultural cycle, upcoming dangers etc. The grandfather of a friend of mine became possessed by Omotojin on 5 different occasions in the last half of the 20th Century.
This wonderfully weathered torii stands in front of the Omoto Shrine in Yato. It's a small settlement on the banks of the Yato River, not big enough for a shop, but it has 2 shrines. The Omoto shrine is dedicated to Omotojin who is the original, local, land kami. Up in Izumo he is called Kojin, and he was the main kami of worship for every community in the old days.
Prior to 1945 there was just a hokora (wayside shrine) here set in a grove of trees. The trees were cut down and sold and the money used to build the present shrine. Every 6 years until 1966, Omoto Kagura was performed here. My friends recently deceased grandfather danced here and 5 times became possesed by Omotojin, the most times for one person in living memory. Shamanic kagura was widespread in Japan until the Meiji era. This area of Iwami is the only place in Japan where it is still practised.
In front of the shrine stands a giant Mukonoki tree with a width of 1.5 metres. Aphananthe Aspera has no name in English. The leaves of the tree were used as sandpaper.
A few hundred meters away, the steps lead up to the Hachiman Shrine.
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