Entertainment Fit for the Gods

I feel incredibly lucky whenever I get to experience some authentic Japanese culture. It could be an enkai party with other teachers, eating ramen out at 1am, or driving to work through heavy snow and slippery roads. Today, my daily dose of Japan was the Hanamaki City Kagura Festa!

Kagura means "god's entertainment." And really, it's incredibly entertaining! It's a dance style based on Shinto theatre that may or may not be older than Noh. I know, no way! That's old, by the way. With such religious roots, kagura was used as a means of worship and "god pacification" or "chinkon." But, as culture is wont to do, it spread and diversified. Most of the dances are based in agriculture including dances based on rice planting and harvesting, and they all feature similar theatrical elements including beautiful costumes, paper wands and rattles with bells. The music all involves a kind of small taiko, flutes, little cymbals and chanting.

It's about as Japanese as it gets.

Today, all the dances were performed by students from elementary through junior high school. Cute, cute, cute! And really impressive! One of the dances was about servers in a tea house and involved the dancers balancing tea trays on their palms and using centrifugal force to roll on the floor, spin and flip the trays without dropping them!

My picture it's not, but Iwate it is!

A perfect example of kagura is shishiodori, which I mentioned heavily back in August during the Michinoku Geino festival: nature-centric, beautiful costumes, traditional dancing style.

I apologize for the quality of the pictures, but with any luck, you'll get the gist...and the itch to do a little web-based research of your own!