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Kagura, Chaban, and the Awaji Puppet Theatre: A Literary View of Japan's Performing Arts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Barbara E. Thornbury
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Extract

“That night, a blind singer recited a Michinoku ballad to the accompaniment of his lute. He performed not far from where I was trying to sleep, and I found his loud, countrified falsetto rather noisy … But then I realized how admirable it was that the fine old customs were still preserved in that distant land.” In writing The Narrow Road of the Interior (Oku no hosomichi, ca. 1694), from which these lines are taken, the poet Bashō (1644–94) recalled a trip he had taken a few years earlier through Japan's northeast—what he referred to as “that distant land.” In the work Bashō reflects on the past as it survives in the present, on places made famous by poets of earlier times, and on the traditional performing arts that live on in such places. Even today Japan's northeast is known as a region where many traditional performing arts are still preserved.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , May 1994 , pp. 55 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1994

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References

Endnotes

1 Bashō, Matsuo;, “The Narrow Road of the Interior,” in McCullough, Helen Craig, ed., Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 534Google Scholar.

2 In “The Narrow Road of the Interior” Bashō had also referred to kōwaka mai ballad drama. A professional form in Bashōs day, it now survives only in the village of Ōe in Fukuoka Prefecture, where it is presented once a year at a village festival.

3 Japanese surnames precede given names.

4 Other writers who took up the subject include Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916), Shimazaki Tōson (1872–1943), and Inoue Yasushi (1907–1991).

5 For a discussion of events that feature the traditional performing arts, see my article “From Festival Setting to Center Stage: Preserving Japan's Folk Performing Arts,” Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 10, no. 2 (1993): 163–178CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Quotes will be cited as follows: Junichirō, Cy Tanizaki, Childhood Years, A Memoir [1955–56, trans, by McCarthy, Paul] (New York: Kodansha International, 1988)Google Scholar. Junichirō, SPN Tanizaki, Some Prefer Nettles [1929, trans, by Seidensticker, Edward G.] (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1981)Google Scholar. PM Uno Chiyo, “The Puppet Maker,” [1942] in Copeland, Rebecca L., The Sound of the Wind: The Life and Works of Uno Chiyo (Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press, 1992), 105–137Google Scholar.

7 The history of kagura stretches back to the legendary origins of the Japanese performing arts. The sun goddess, as the story goes, had, in a fit of pique, plunged the world into darkness by hiding herself in a cave. The entertainments staged by her fellow deities were what succeeded in luring her out. By the 16th century kagura was being performed in shrines throughout Japan, having influenced and having itself been influenced by the development of nō. The 19th century saw the creation of Edo sato kagura (Edo folk kagura). Troupes in the Edo (present-day Tokyo) area performed plays at local shrines based on myths recorded in the ancient chronicles. The presentations were enthusiastically supported by contemporary intellectuals who saw kagura as a way to spread knowledge of Japanese tradition. The opening of Japan to the West in the 1850's and the Meiji Restoration (1868) were accompanied by a movement asserting the supremacy of indigenous (i.e. Shinto) culture. There was an attempt to rid Shintō of its imported (i.e. Buddhist) elements, which included the dialogue in kagura. See Hoff, Frank, Song, Dance, Storytelling: Aspects of the Performing Arts in Japan (Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Papers, 1978), 205Google Scholar.

8 Keene, Donald, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1984), 1134Google Scholar.

9 Yasuji, Honda, Nihon no dentō geinō (Tokyo: Kinjōsha, 1990)Google Scholar; Ortolani, Benito, The Japanese Theatre: From Shamanistic Ritual to Contemporary Pluralism (New York, E.J. Brill, 1990)Google Scholar; Hoff, Frank, “Folk Performing Arts,” Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, Vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1983), 297Google Scholar.

10 For a discussion of this law in relation to the performing arts, see my article “The Cultural Properties Protection Law and Japan's Folk Performing Arts,” forthcoming in Asian Folklore Studies.