On Sunday we went downriver to the Oihikonomikoto Shrine in Matsukawa Oda. They always have their matsuri on a Sunday during the daytime so there is no problem deciding which matsuri to visit like on a Saturday night when there might be 10 or more going on.
The village doesn't have a kagura group so Iwamishindaikagura Kamiko Syachu from Hamada were paid to perform.
The first dance we saw was Kurozuka, a very popular dance especially with older kids. Based on a couple of Noh plays the story revolves around an evil white fox. I was particularly impressed with this groups fox mask.
In the early part of the story/dance a priest and his guide Goriki, spend the night in a house of a pregnant woman. She is in fact the evil fox in disguise and in the video we see here she bewitches and possesses the guide. In the original story she kills and eats him, but in the dance he survives.
The priest then begins to battle the fox. The Kurozuka dance has many different variations depending on the group that is performing it. Often the dance incorporates pantomime and humor and the dancers speak in modern vernacular and local dialect.
The fox will invariably attack the audience and seek out young children to terrify.
Parents seem to take great delight in their kids being terrified and will call the fox to attack their babies. The Japanese believe that screaming loudly will cause their kids to grow up strong and healthy. I personally find it uncomfortable and believe it is more to instill fear in the kids and keep them close to the family and frightened of "outside".
The eighth matsuri we visited in our October Matsuri marathon was our own village's matsuri. The shrine was packed when we arrived, and stayed packed all night. A large chunk of the audience was composed of young people, especially young women. It seems the Tanijyugo group has grown in popularity and now has many fans from outside the village.
The kids did a great version of Jinrin, and showed the same dedication and professionalism as the rest of the group.
In the Kurozuka dance the leader of the group played the priest. Buddhist priests appear in many of the dances, though nowadays kagura is classified as "shinto", historically it has a lot of buddhist influence, not just in the stories, but in the mandalas that compose much of the dance movements.
The evil kitsune appears first in the form of a beautiful maiden. All the female parts in kagura are played by males, but the hands often give away the gender of the dancer.
At one point the hapless priests assistant climbs up into the tengai and the fox follows and they fight suspended above the floor. This is unique to Tanijyugo group, and a specially strenghtened tengai held up by chains is used.
3 a.m. and the orchestra shows signs of flagging :)
This was the first time I saw our group perform Yasogami, with Okuninushi's 80 brothers represented by 2 fools.
In this part of the dance Okuninushi and his brothers perform a dance that is normally done using swords and when done properly is quite exciting and complex. here though the bumbling brothers make a mess of it.
For our next matsuri we headed up into the mountains to Mizuho, near the border with Hiroshima. Sekai Daijingu is a "New Religion", an offshoot of Omottokyo, and the head shrine is here in Iwami.
I don't know a lot about this religion, but one of the priests spent an hour chatting with me and the 2 points he stressed were that the kami worshipped are the "old" kami of Japan, the Sun, Moon, and Earth, and he stressed a disassociation from Shinto which he considered a version of the State Shinto which he linked strongly to the war.
Unlike a usual matsuri, here there were many groups each dancing once. The first up was Miho Kagura Dan, from northern Hiroshima. Hiroshima Kagura developed out of Iwami Kagura, but the costumes are a little different, and for the "good guys" Hiroshima Kagura doesnt use masks but make-up.
The dance they performed was Akko Den, another name for Kurozuka, a famous story taken from the Noh repertoire.
Its a popular dance especially among kids as it involves an evil white fox that devours people.
The dance involves several mask and costume changes as the fox transforms from its human form as a beautiful woman into its true form.
Before the kagura began there was a performance of a Taiko group from Oda.
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