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...
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