Autumn Matsuri 2014 part 2

When we arrived at the shrine at 10:30 the Shioharae was in progress. This is usually the second dance of the night and purifies the dance area for the rest of the nights performances. It is a shinji, a ceremonial dance as opposed to a theatrical dance. There was a TV crew from Tokyo filming the visiting American "dancer" and I found the performance of the audience a little disconcerting.

Next up was Yumi Hachiman, a 2 man dance featuring the hero Hachiman, the patron kami of the shrine, defeating a demon.

It is a standard fighting dance where good triumphs over evil and featuring a spectacular smoke and firework entrance of the demon.

Our local kagura troupe are really good. They are all amateurs, but their performances are always tight and professional. The next dance was Kakko-Kirime. The first part involves Kakko, somewhat of a fool, who steals a sacred drum from a shrine and attempts, unsuccessfully  to activate it. I like the dance because it allows the dancer to incorporate a lot of his own moves and sequences. In the second half of the dancer the kami Kirime descends and teaches kakko the correct way.

I left then, past midnight. There was to be 6 more hours of dancing, but I was feeling out of sorts and I needed to be fresh for the final part of the matsuri, a series of ceremonies tomorrow morning followed by the carrying of the mikoshi.....

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...

OMMMMK 7

The seventh kagura matsuri for us this month was at Kakushi in Gotsu. Being in a town there were lots of people there and lots of stalls. There were lots and lots of kids running around. It was a Monday night but because of the all night matsuri all the local schools were closed next morning.

First dance we saw was Shioharae, the purification of the dance space. We came here about 6 years ago and Kakushi had their own kagura group, in the more traditional 6-beat style. Tonight Tsuchi kagura group were playing. Tsuchi pay the faster 8-beat style. Actually Tsuchi were the teachers of my own village kagura group.

Next up was Hachiman. The Kakushi shrine, like many round here, is a Hachiman shrine. Last year when we did the rounds of the matsuris it seemed that everywhere we turned up they were dancing the Iwato dance. This year it seems to be the Hachiman dance.

Hachiman danced alone, and fought a single demon.

Next up was Yamato Takeru. There are a whole series of myths/legends/stories about the exploits of the prince known as Yamato Takeru, mostly concerned with his subjugation of tribes outside Yamato control in Kyushu, Izumo, and the East. On his way east he is given a sacred sword by his aunt who was the Head Priestess as the Ise shrine. This is the sword that Susano found in the tail of the 8-headed serpent Yamata no Orochi, and gave to his sister Amaterasu the Sun Goddess, ancestor of the Yamato imperial line.

In the East he is almost killed when his enemies lure him alone into a grassy plain. They light the dry grass all around him but he uses the sword to cut down the grass around him and he creates a firebreak. Since this episode the sacred sword, one of the three Imperial Regalia, has been known as Kusanagi, the grass-cutting sword.

Shioharae

The first dance in any Iwami Kagura performance is the Shioharae, in which the dancers purify the dance space in readiness for the kami. While there are nowadays performances of kagura put on in public spaces for tourists, the home of kagura is in the shrine, and like many activities it is performed firstly for the kami.

This performance is by the Ichiyama kagura group in their home shrine of Ichiyama Hachimangu. The 4 colors worn by the dancers represent the 4 directions. Above the dancers is the tengai, a canopy of paper streamers. The kami descend through these streamers into the dancers.

Kagura dancers hold various torimono, objects through which the kami pass into the dancers. In this dance the torimono are wands and metal rattles. Other common torimono are fans and swords. The dancers create mandalas with their movements, am influence from esoteric buddhism by way of Shugendo.

The dance lasts about 40 minutes.