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.

Bone marrow at the Court Restaurant, British Museum

The Court Restaurant is a classy place to eat lunch at the British Museum. Situated high up in the Great Court, you get good views of the wonderful geometric glass ceiling over the court and can see the clouds beyond. Because there are two coffee shops in the court below, the buzz of conversation from there is a little diverting, but the restaurant's tablecloth settings, including a live miniature chili plant (with chilis) instead of flowers, give a fancy ambience. For those pleasures, the menu is stiff: ca. £22 for a 2-course or £28 for a 3-course meal. But a la carte held some surprises.

Bone Marrow at the Court Restaurant, British Museum

In the past month, I have seen three references to bone marrow on menus. Where has this come from suddenly?? I suppose bone marrow is consistent with the traditional down-market English cuisine of whelks, steak & kidney pie, tongue and tripe, etc. I first ate it (trepidatiously) mixed in with mashed potatoes. Wonderful! What a flavour. So yesterday at the British Museum, I thought I'd try the Small Plate meal of Bone Marrow (£6.50, not a bad price for lunch).

What did I get? Four halves of a long bone and three slices of baguette. I needed more baguette! The stuff was so rich I could only eat one and a half of the bone contents, sharing an equal amount with my co-diners. That took care of the three baguette slices and left one bone contents uneaten. So I asked to take all the bones home with me (of course, the waitress thought it was for a dog, but it was really for my husband to try, on a rice cracker).

How was it? Well, straight from the bone, it wasn't as tasty as the mashed potatoes. It might have been better if I had loaded the seasoned salad garnish with sea salt onto the bread as well. In making my open-face sandwich, it was hard to spread the marrow. It has the consistency of jello (English jelly) and tends to wobble around a lot and fall off the bread. It looked kind of greyey pink, somewhat like a pink speckled jelly bean. And I felt like a Stone Age carnivore eating it.

Would I try it again? Yes, for the novelty and to see if the flavour changes with different ways of cooking and presenting it. It was a great conversation piece over lunch and cost a quarter of what the others paid. So, see you at the Court Restaurant for a real experience!

Toilet paper rolls (literally!)

Toilet paper rolls!

Here they make 2- and 3-ply (!) quilted toilet paper that is so heavy, when you get towards the end of the roll, it unrolls itself onto the floor. Bonkers, or what?

When we were in graduate school in the States, we lived in a house with five students. There was an almighty row between two of them over how much toilet paper one should use (reflecting on household costs, of course). One said you only need three sheets, while the other would pull off two or three swaths of TP. The argument eventually broke up the household. The one that left would have liked this British quilted TP; she could have used only two sheets and saved even more money!