Miko-mai, or Miko Kagura

 

 

Today was the matsuri at Tsunozu. Last night was the all night kagura, but I was feeling a bit under the weather so didn't make it, but went there today to catch the mikoshi parade and the Miko mai.

Miko-mai is probably the most common and widely seen form of kagura in Japan, though its rare in my neighborhood. Most of the bigger shrines that have full-time staff and miko will perform it.

Here at Tsunozu the miko are 4 young elementary school girls. First the dance was performed inside the shrine at a ceremony for all the "leaders" of the village and matsuri. Later it was performed outside the shrine for all the assembled villagers.

Tsunozu really takes their matsuri seriously, with all the local kids getting the afternoon off school.

Unfortunately this year, just as the procession was beginning the heavens opened up and we were drenched in a downpour.

Cave of 1000 Buddhas

The Cave of 1,000 Buddhas is another of the "attractions" at Kosan-Ji on Ikuchijima in Hiroshima Prefecture.

One descends into a labyrinth of underground caves and tunnels past a series of tableaux and depictions of buddhist hells.

Then one enters the realm of the buddhas.

The caves and tunnels are all man-made.

One emerges back into the light at the foot of a giant statue of Kannon.

My Sky Hole.85

My Sky Hole.85 is a large public sculpture by world-renowned Japanese artist Inoue Bukichi.

It's one of a large sequence of works titled, not unsurprisingly, My Sky Hole. This one was completed in 1985

It's located outside of the Wel City building in Hiroshima, a few hundred metres from the Peace Park.

He was born in Nara in 1930, and died in 1997. There is another of his works in Hiroshima.

The Heights of Eternal Hope for the Future

Miraishin no Oka is a 5,000 sq. m. sculpture park on the hilltop overlooking Kosan-Ji on Ikujima, a small island in the Inland Sea off Hiroshima.

The brainchild of Environmental sculptor Kazuto Kuetani, all the sculptures and the marble that coveres the hillside was shipped from the Carrera quarry in Italy, where he has worked for the past 18 years.

The only way to visit the hill is through Kosan-Ji, which charges 1,200 yen entrance, but what you get for that price is quite astounding.

On a sunny day the hilltop is blinding. There is also an Italian restaurant in the park.

The island can be reached easily from Ehime Prefecture in Shikoku or Ohnomichi Town in Hiroshima.

Princess Yakami

Yakami Hime was a beautiful princess ( as all such princesses must be) in the land of Inaba, now western Tottori. She appears in the old myth The White Rabbit of Inaba.

In Izumo, Okuninushi's 80 brothers, known as the Yasogami, head off to Inaba to try and win the princess's hand. Okuninushi was relegated to baggage carrier for his brothers.

On a beach they discover a sick rabbit, and the yasogami are cruel to it. When Okuninushi arrives he helps the rabbit, and seeing his kindness, Yakami hime falls in love with him.

Eventually Okuninushi marries her, but later dumps her so he can marry one of Susano's daughters.

The photos are from the kagura dance Yasogami, performed here by the Tsuchi Kagura Group at last years Gotsu kagura Festival.

Tallship Nadezhda

The 109 metre sail-training ship NADEZHDA out of Vladivostock is making a courtesy visit to Hamada this weekend.

When we got there on Sunday afternoon they were already almost finished furling the sails,

But there were still lots of crew up in the rigging.

There was a very festive atmosphere with local people putting on kagura and folk songs,

And the crew reciprocating with Russian songs and dancing.

We were allowed to wander around onboard, but weren't allowed below decks.


I spent an afternoon sailing on a similar boat a few decades ago when I lived in Falmouth while it was hosting the Tall Ships Race. Coincidentally that boat was also built at the Gdansk Shipyards in Poland.

October means Matsuri. Matsuri means Kagura.

At least it does in my neck of the woods.

We decided to head to the matsuri at Imada. Imada, like my village, is not a place you pass through on the way to somewhere. It's out of the way, small, and quiet.

It was a nice warm evening, and the full moon shone through the mantles of mist that lay upon the mountains around the shrine.

As soon as we arrived 2 cold beers were pressed into our hands. Later we were given steaming bowls of oden and more beer. I like village matsuri's :)

The atmosphere was nice and relaxed and there was plenty of space in the shrine to seit. Outside local people had octopus balls, yakitori, and oden cooking. Lots of kids running around as this is one of the few nights of the year they get to stay up all night.

We spent a good hour chatting with Mr. Yamanaka, a local councillor and a trove of information on local history. Several times he grovelled on the floor to show just how low in the social hierarchy Imada was. He seemed curiously proud of how the local people were historically the bottom rung of the lowest class. He also was able to fill me in with some details of a local shinwa. He was very interested in reintroducing the old ways of growing rice and food, in symbiotic relationship with animals, wild and domestic.


The kagura was good. Imada plays the older 6-beat style, and Mr. Yamanaka bemoaned the loss of traditions in the newer more popular 8 beat kagura.The group only perform once a year, but played consientiously.


This short video is from the Iwato dance and Uzume is dancing to entice Amaterasu out of the cave.

Busy, busy, busy...

Millet hung up to dry.

Been very busy this past month. I don't grow any rice, so I haven't needed to harvest that like everyone else round here. Have been receiving bags of really fresh rice from friends and neighbors though.

I've been busy dealing with the surplus of tomatoes, peppers etc, so been doing a lot of canning.

And now the matsuri season begins. Harvesting mostly done all the village shrines will be having their annual matsuri this month. Tomorrow, saturday, we have eight matsuris going on within a ten minute drive of our place.

Busy, busy, busy......

In the wake of Lafcadio Hearn. Part 3

"Then we advance, picking our way very, very carefully between the stone-towers, toward the mouth of the inner grotto, and reach the statue of Jizo before it. A seated Jizo carven in granite, holding in one hand the mystic jewel by virtue of which all wishes may be fulfilled; in the other his shakujo, or pilgrim's staff. Before him (strange condescension of Shinto faith!) a little torii has been erected, and a pair of gohei! Evidently this gentle divinity has no enemies; at the feet of the lover of children's ghosts, both creeds unite in tender homage."

"I said feet. But this subterranean Jizo has only one foot. The carven lotus on which he reposes has been fractured and broken: two great petals are missing; and the right foot, which must have rested upon one of them, has been knocked off at the ankle. This, I learn upon inquiry, has been done by the waves. In times of great storm the billows rush into the cavern like raging Oni, and sweep all the little stone towers into shingle as they come, and dash the statues against the rocks. But always during the first still night after the tempest the work is reconstructed as before!"

"Hotoke ga shimpai shite: naki-naki tsumi naoshi-masu.' They make mourning, the hotoke; weeping, they pile up the stones again, they rebuild their towers of prayer."

"All about the black mouth of the inner grotto the bone-coloured rock bears some resemblance to a vast pair of yawning jaws. Downward from this sinister portal the cavern-floor slopes into a deeper and darker aperture. And within it, as one's eyes become accustomed to the gloom, a still larger vision of stone towers is disclosed; and beyond them, in a nook of the grotto, three other statues of Jizo smile, each one with a torii before it. Here I have the misfortune to upset first one stone- pile and then another, while trying to proceed. My kurumaya, almost simultaneously, ruins a third. To atone therefore, we must build six new towers, or double the number of those which we have cast down. And while we are thus busied, the boatwoman tells of two fishermen who remained in the cavern through all one night, and heard the humming of the viewless gathering, and sounds of speech, like the speech of children murmuring in multitude."

"Only at night do the shadowy children come to build their little stone- heaps at the feet of Jizo; and it is said that every night the stones are changed. When I ask why they do not work by day, when there is none to see them, I am answered: 'O-Hi-San [2] might see them; the dead exceedingly fear the Lady-Sun.'"

"To the question, 'Why do they come from the sea?' I can get no satisfactory answer. But doubtless in the quaint imagination of this people, as also in that of many another, there lingers still the
primitive idea of some communication, mysterious and awful, between the world of waters and the world of the dead. It is always over the sea, after the Feast of Souls, that the spirits pass murmuring back to their dim realm, in those elfish little ships of straw which are launched for them upon the sixteenth day of the seventh moon. Even when these are launched upon rivers, or when floating lanterns are set adrift upon lakes or canals to light the ghosts upon their way, or when a mother
bereaved drops into some running stream one hundred little prints of Jizo for the sake of her lost darling, the vague idea behind the pious act is that all waters flow to the sea and the sea itself unto the 'Nether-distant Land.'"

In the Wake of Lafcadio Hearn. Part 2

"From the caves of the Kami we retrace our course for about a quarter of a mile; then make directly for an immense perpendicular wrinkle in the long line of black cliffs. Immediately before it a huge dark rock towers from the sea, whipped by the foam of breaking swells. Rounding it, we glide behind it into still water and shadow, the shadow of a monstrous cleft in the precipice of the coast."

"And suddenly, at an unsuspected angle, the mouth of another cavern yawns before us; and in another moment our boat touches its threshold of stone with a little shock that sends a long sonorous echo, like the sound of a temple drum, booming through all the abysmal place. A single glance tells me whither we have come."

"Far within the dusk I see the face of a Jizo, smiling in palestone, and before him, and all about him, a weird congregation of grey shapes without shape--a host of fantasticalities that strangely suggest
the wreck of a cemetery. From the sea the ribbed floor of the cavern slopes high through deepening shadows hack to the black mouth of a farther grotto; and all that slope is covered with hundreds and
thousands of forms like shattered haka. But as the eyes grow accustomed to the gloaming it becomes manifest that these were never haka; they are only little towers of stone and pebbles deftly piled up by long and patient labour."

"'Shinda kodomo no shigoto,' my kurumaya murmurs with a compassionate smile; 'all this is the work of the dead children.'"

"And we disembark. By counsel, I take off my shoes and put on a pair of zori, or straw sandals provided for me, as the rock is extremely slippery. The others land barefoot. But how to proceed soon becomes a puzzle: the countless stone-piles stand so close together that no space for the foot seems to be left between them."

"'Mada michiga arimasu!' the boatwoman announces, leading the way. There is a path."

"Following after her, we squeeze ourselves between the wall of the cavern on the right and some large rocks, and discover a very, very narrow passage left open between the stone-towers. But we are warned to be careful for the sake of the little ghosts: if any of their work be overturned, they will cry. So we move very cautiously and slowly across the cave to a space bare of stone-heaps, where the rocky floor is covered with a thin layer of sand, detritus of a crumbling ledge above it. And in that sand I see light prints of little feet, children's feet, tiny naked feet, only three or four inches long--the footprints of the infant ghosts."

"Had we come earlier, the boatwoman says, we should have seen many more. For 'tis at night, when the soil of the cavern is moist with dews and drippings from the roof, that They leave Their footprints upon it; but when the heat of the day comes, and the sand and the rocks dry up, the
prints of the little feet vanish away."

Text by Lafcadio Hearn. Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894)
Photos by Ojisanjake More Glimpses of Unfamilar japan (2009)

In the Wake of Lafcadio Hearn Part 1