Japanese Deer Dance at the Thames Festival

Kanatsu Shishi Odori
at the Ashmolean Museum
8 September 2012

Last week, England was visited by a Japanese troupe of 14 deer dancer cum drummers. Invited to the Thames Festival, which took place on the weekend (Sept 8-9), they also danced at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and at the Embassy of Japan in London. The troupe is from Iwate Prefecture in northern Tohoku where they traditionally dance at festivals and blessing ceremonies; here they danced in memory of those lost to the tsunami last year. Though the dance is stately and serious, the audience was wowed by the tossing of horns and flattening of the white spires to the ground as they bent over.

The dance is called Shishi Odori. We actually heard a Japanese guy telling his British girlfriend at the Thames Festival parade that it was a Lion Dance from Fukushima. Wrong! It is a Deer Dance from Iwate, even though the word shishi in Japanese is written with the Chinese characters for 'lion'. The word shishi itself is ancient, meaning 'meat', and there are several kinds of meat mentioned in old documents:  ka-no-shishi (deer meat), and i-no-shishi (boar meat), with inoshishi becoming the normal word for 'boar'. The tossing of the heads resembles real deer behaviour, and the dance may symbolize ancient hunting practices revering the animals providing the food. Several other origin myths surround its distant beginnings.

Deer Dancer kneeling,
from the back

The dance costumes are very heavy, weighing about 40 pounds, a lot of the weight residing in the headgear. The long spires are bamboo that are slivered into spikes, then tied together with string into which folded papers are entwined. The papers are similar to those used in Shinto rituals to call down the god(s). Two of the fourteen dancers have spired with black bands at the top: these are the troupe leader and the single nominal doe in the group, this time actually played by a woman dancer. Traditionally the dancers have all been male, but women can now join the groups. See their dance in the Thames Festival night parade, at 0:55-1.14 minutes.

The headdress is fixed with steel antlers and has two long flaps that cascade down the back. These are painted with designs similar to those painted onto wide back panels of the divided skirt (hakama). Many such costumes, drums, and actual dancers of Tohoku performing arts were lost to the tsunami on 3.11; for this particular troupe, one drum was washed away but came floating back – taken as an auspicious even among tragedies. Sponsored by the Japan Foundation, it was quite an undertaking to bring a large dance troups and their accoutrements to London, but we hope to see them here again sometime.

Leap Day in Durham: The Musicon Festival of East Asian Music

Leap Day today; I asked my husband to marry me, and he said, "What? Again?". Well, if not leaping into marriage, there are other things to leap for joy about.

Kiku Day with some of her myriad
jinashi shakuhachi

Leapin' lizards! How often do you get to hear jinashi shakuhachi and Satsuma biwa outside of Japan? Or even inside of Japan? These two instruments were the first offered in the 'bamboo' themed Musicon Festival concert series at Durham University last night.

The shakuhachi is usually identified as an instrument of Zen Buddhism, useful in inducing meditation. And indeed, the first performer entered the concert hall as a Buddhist monk, in formal dress with the usual tengai basket over the head. The basket is supposed to erase identity, so it would have done no good to take a picture of Kiku Day in that costume. Here you see her relaxed with some of her shakuhachi that do not have a lacquered bore (thus, jinashi, 'no lacquer'). She played several meditative pieces, astounding her audience with the fluttering, plaintive, evocative sounds of the free-rhythm wanderings.

Kiku, a Dane with a Japanese and American background, studied honkyoku, with Master Okuda Atsuya in Tokyo for 11 years. She is a founding member of the European Shakuhachi Society and teaches shakuhachi in London and at Aarhus University in Denmark after having taken a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology at SOAS in 2010.

Charles Marshall on the biwa lute,
in formal Japanese dress

Charles Marshall, a consummate biwa lute player of the Satsuma tradition of narrative storytelling, gave us recitation in Japanese of the famous 12th-century hero, Nasu no Yoichi, who shot an arrow from the back of a skittish horse at a fan mounted on an enemy boat during the Battle of Yashima. He also sang a piece once performed by Buddhist monks travelling door-to-door to collect alms. The amazing sounds from the biwa – deep undertones capped with a wailing melody, buzzing bass strings, all punctuated by the slap, slap of the plectrum on the instrument body – were equalled by Charlie's perfect rendition of the Satsuma recitation style, not a trivial accomplishment for either foreigners or Japanese. (His serious facial expression, by the way, is the one expected of Japanese when performing most genres of traditional music - even in happy stories. One audience member asked him about this after the concert.)

Originally an Organ Scholar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Charlie went to Japan as a JET English teacher and ended up spending 14 years there, learning Satsuma biwa from the Master Yoshinori Fumon between 1994 and 2003. He is now back in Ireland pursuing an MA in organ performance while continuing to maintain these extremely specialized and rare skills.

Okinawan Music at the Japan Matsuri

We did it again! The London Sanshinkai did a half hour's performance this past Sunday at the 2011 Japan Matsuri (Festival), singing slow and fast songs and then dancing the Okinawan bon dance, Eisa. Great fun. The stuff is already up on Youtube.

Let's start with the fast dance, Toshindoi

Penguin outside the London Aquarium in
kimono for the Japan Matsuri!

Then to a slow dance and song, Asadoya Yunta

And end with a slow song teaching morals to children, Tinsagu no Hana

Unlike the past two years of Japan Matsuri held at Spitlefields Market, this one took place around the outside of the London County Hall, next to the London Eye. Lots of stalls offering food and trinkets; two outdoor stages for music performances and one for martial arts. Good that it didn't rain!

Don't know where next year's festival will be held yet but probably at the same time of year – maybe conflicting again with London Open House Weekend (previous blog)...Keep in touch with the Japan Matsuri website.