International Exchange: Ylva and Kajsa I (revised)

Ylva, me, and Kajsa (in that order) on the Togetsukyo bridge in Arashiyama.  (Photo courtesy of Ylva Henrikson)

In the beginning of August, I got a surprise E-mail from two young women from Sweden, who were coming to Japan and wanting a guide into the world of noh.

I met them at the end of the month in Asakusa over a sushi meal.  Ylva and Kajsa are contemporary dance artists and were researching for a performance inspired by Mishima Yukio’s modernized version of the noh play Hanjo.  The story centers around a young woman, who has been left by her lover, who promised to come back after he finished some pressing business.  Waiting for him to return, she becomes distracted to the point of madness and wanders Japan looking for him.  In the noh play, she eventually meets him at a shrine in Kyoto.  In Mishima’s play, after spending every day in a train station in Tokyo, waiting for him to come, he comes to her home, but runs away when she doesn’t recognize him.

It seems to me in Mishima’s case that the young man doesn’t seem to understand the woman’s madness.  Is this perhaps indicative of something larger in our society?  Do we emphasize conformity so much that we cannot understand individual pain?

Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri

Shrine priestesses dance kagura to open the Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri dance performances.  The kagura piece pictured above is entitled Sensai or One Thousand Years.

On a rainy Wednesday afternoon in December, I took the trains to Nara, the capital of Japan from 710 to 784 and a center of Japanese religion ever since.

I had set my mind on seeing the Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri since I had first read the 1349 records of the shrine festival.  That year, a shrine priestess named Otozuru Gozen performed Okina, which in the contemporary repetoir of Noh is performed exclusively by men (see my previous entry about Okina here). In 1349, Okina was the first dance of the day’s performances.  Okina’s position at the beginning of the program shows the religious weight of the piece.  Even 650 years later, contemporary performances of Okina are always at the beginning of a program, and it is said that a god decends and inhabits the dancer during his performance.  Now Okina is not performed at the Onmatsuri, but priestesses dance kagura to open the day’s performances (see picture above). Kagura are shrine dances, and the titles of the four dances performed all indicate the celebratory nature of kagura.

The End of Summer at Horin-ji

The priests’ prayers before the Noh performance.  Their robes were sumptuous purple and orange silks.  Only one of them wore black silk.

The temple Horin-ji annually holds a Noh performance on September 9th.  I wrote a little about it two posts ago.  Usually Udaka Michishige performs, but two years ago I was too busy with work to go watch, and last year September 9th landed on a weekend, so Udaka-Sensei was too busy to perform.  Finally, I had another opportunity this year and made sure I was able to take time off from work to go to the temple in Arashiyama.

I joined Sensei and a troop of young people who study with him and generally support his activities, including his two sons, Tatsushige and Norishige, who are actors in their own rights, his daughter, Keiko, who carves masks, his daughter-in-law, Haruna, who is also a semi-professional actor, and Natsuko, who also studies mask-carving, but has taken on a leading role in organizing events and working PR for Sensei.  We made an excursion out of the event, for the weather had grown sunny after a few rainy days that had brought an end to the summer heat.

“Makura-Jido” at Horinji Temple

For those of you who have heard me talk about Noh and about Udaka-sensei, but have never quite understood what it was I was talking about – maybe you simply haven’t seen a Noh performance before – here is a You Tube recording that may show you some of the appeal. This video is of Udaka Michishige-sensei dancing “Makura-jido” at Horenji Temple in 2006 on September 9. I do not know who took it, and there are some shaky spots and a pillar that gets in the way of the view, but I am glad they did. I remember that morning getting a call from Sensei saying he was picking me up to go, but I was already at work and had been unable to get the day off. Seeing the video only makes me regret not having gone even more.

Watching the video, you can see the chorus sitting across from the camera. It was a pleasant surprise when I realized I knew all of them. On the left is Ono-sensei, a professor of environmental biology at Okayama University and student of Udaka-sensei, in the middle is Udaka Tatsushige-sensei, Udaka-sensei’s son, and on the right is Urushigaki-san also a student of Udaka-sensei. To the left are the musicians, and the performance is taking place facing a Buddhist altar inside a temple, which is a very rare setting. I haven’t had another opportunity to see a similar performance.

Die Udaka-kai Europa Tournee: Dresden & Berlin

Im Schauspielhaus Dresden beim Vorlesen der Botschaften der Bürgermeister von Hiroshima und Nagasaki

Nach den im Vergleich gemütlichen Tagen in Paris, sind wir über Frankfurt nach Dresden geflogen für einen langen Abend mit Aufführungen von Han-Nô (nur der zweiten Akt) „Funabenkei“ und „Inori (Gebet)“ ein originelles Stück geschrieben von Meister UDAKA Michishige. Am nächsten Tag ging es am Morgen nach Berlin für Aufführungen von „Aoi-no-Ue“ am gleichen Abend und von „Inori“ am Abend darauf. Die Reaktion im deutschen Publikum war wie erwartet anders als die in Paris, aber was ich nicht gewusst und nicht erwartet habe war daß sogar innerhalb Deutschland die Reaktionen in Dresden und Berlin ganz unterschiedlich waren.

The Udaka-kai European Tour: Paris

Original Noh masks for the play Inori, written by Udaka Michishige

I just returned from an unreal world created in unreal time and space. From November 4 to November 15, I took time off from school to be with a group of actors, musicians, technicians, mask carvers, and general supporters in Paris, Dresden, and Berlin for a tour of Noh performances. In each city, Udaka Michishige made vengeful spirits and tormented souls appear on stage and helped them find enlightenment by telling their stories to the public. Even I got to join in the performance as a light-bringing angel in the original Noh play Inori.

The purpose of the trip was to perform Inori (Prayer), a play by Udaka Michishige about the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also about violence and terror throughout the world, to an international audience for the first time. Before our departure, Sensei went with Nakamura Yuko to Hiroshima to the Peace Memorial to inform the spirits there of the intentions for the tour. As they prayed in front of the arch, facing the A-Bomb Dome in the distance, Sensei closed his eyes and could see only a deep, dark red. Thinking this was strange, he turned his face in another direction and closed his eyes. The red color was gone. He turned back towards the Dome and saw the same oppressive red again. Was this the color of the sky during the atomic bombing? His eyes filled with tears, which he hastily wiped away before he turned around for a newspaper interview.

Okina: Religion and Male Chauvinism in Noh

Okina performance by Udaka Michishige, March 10 at Itsukushima Shrine

Perhaps the most beautiful Noh stage in Japan is located in Hiroshima at Itsukushima Shrine. It is surrounded by water at high tide, drawing a natural division between the material world to which the audience belongs and the world of gods presented onstage. Only men may stand on this stage, and early in the morning on March 10, I saw a performance of Okina by Udaka Michishige-sensei.

Okina is the oldest Noh performance piece, more a set of dances than an actual play. It is a piece that women may not perform. The lead actors (shite) who dance Okina are said to become invested with the presence of a god, to literally become the embodiment of a god, during the performance. In preparation, the lead actor will do bekka (a period of ritual purification), during which they are not to eat from the same dishes as women, cannot eat food prepared by women, and are not supposed to communicate directly with women. According to the demanding schedule of an actor and the traditions of their school, actors will practice bekka for a week to a month or (at least in the past) a year in hopes of calling the gods into their performance. Udaka-sensei went through a similar practice for a week before his performance, or so he says since I didn’t see him in that time.

When I explained this all to my father, he commented on the male chauvinism of Noh performance. I had not allowed myself to think about Noh performance as exclusive of women, but wanted to think that the exclusion of women from the professional Noh stage was rather in performances related to particular religious institutions that did not allow women to perform Noh in front of the gods. Yet, although believing male chauvinism exists can also lead to reverse prejudices, this comment prompted me to question women’s role in Noh performance more directly.

Kyoto 57th Annual Takigi Noh

A lantern inscribed with the words Kyoto Takigi Noh

Last week, on the evenings of July 1st and 2nd were the 57th Annual Takigi Noh performances. Noh drama is performed on the grounds of Heian Shrine by the light of fires in raised metal braziers. Thanks to Rebecca Teale, an expert in Noh drama and fellow student of (or rather English publicist for) my Noh drama teacher, Udaka Masashige, I got to do odd jobs to help foreign, English-speaking guests and see the performances for free.

The first night I was even roped into doing the English announcements about cell phones, lavatories, English pamphlets, and bus stops. Sitting in the sound booth, I got to look over the heads of the chorus to see the performances right up close. But with everything going on and all the people around me in the sound booth, rushing out to mike the chorus, adjusting the sound levels as the wind rose, chatting right next to me, or sitting behind me eating their dinners, the simple elegance of the first few performances didn’t draw as much of my attention as I had hoped I could give them. So rather than bore you with the details from the program, let me point out the highlights in my evening.

On Monday…

On Monday, I took a trip to Heian Shrine with my friend Hana. We were in search of wisteria, those luxurious hanging vines covered in small blue flowers. We didn't find wisteria, though we did find…

Gods and Men

Every so often even gods of small neighborhood shrines need to be taken out for a stroll. Many men assemble, wearing all white or close to nothing and in the early morning swagger around the shrine as they wait for the procession to start. It seems the most clean-shaven middle-aged men with conservatively groomed hair and designer glasses appear for this kind of event in the least amount of clothing, even going so far as to wear a sumo-wrestler-like loin cloth with the shrine-provided traditional white over shirt and cotton sweatband wrapped around their head. They chant the loudest and have the biggest smiles. Younger men with long orange hair, instead, look bored and self-confident; for them it is just another display of machismo. These are the men who will carry the portable shrine into which the god is laden for the festival. They come from the neighborhood. They come to break their regular, perhaps monotonous daily routines. This is a highly special occasion.

Having seen posters announcing this occasion a little over a week earlier, I got up as early as I could on the morning of Sunday, May 21, to view the once yearly festival at the neighborhood shrine, Shimo-Goryo Jinja, right on Teramachi street, south of Marutamachi. It was beautiful weather after a string of damp, rainy days. The god must have been pleased by the prospect of an outing.

I thought I would arrive in time to view the first procession at 10. Yet upon my arrival, very little was going on at the shrine and among the festival stands that were just opening up, except that many men in white were lounging around the streets. I must not have missed anything, I thought, as I went into the shrine to give my respects to the god and admired the ancient-looking portable shrine that was made ready in the central raised platform. It had gold tori gates on its sides, behind which curtains of gold pieces chained together hung. The top of the shrine was covered in a red cloth emblazoned with the imperial crest. Certainly a well-backed god this is, I thought.

As I wandered back out of the shrine, I could hear chanting out on the street.