Introduction
There is a trend in contemporary historical scholarship that treats Japanese modernity as an inevitability. It argues that the foundations for modernity were laid during the almost three centuries of Tokugawa rule, and that the arrival of Commodore Perry’s “black ships” then provided the impetus to kickstart a modern society. Due to this foundation-laying, the shift to the Meiji period and modernity proceeded smoothly and without undue conflict. I have no major objections to this interpretation, but I am more interested in the ways in which modernity developed within the reality of the daily lives of ordinary peo-ple and the methods by which they coped with this change. This article examines the common peopeo-ple’s sense of daily life, the festivals that provided their communities with ceremonial occasions (hare no ba), and the folk performing arts (minzoku geinō, a classificatory term that came into common use after the Second World War) that were performed as part of those festivals. All of these aspects are brought together under the term festival performing arts (sairei geinō).
Headgear for ceremonial occasions
The Japanese calendar changed from the lunar to solar calendar when December 31st 1872 became
January 1st 1873. This imperial decree created a massive change in the daily lives of commoners. For
those for whom the change of the seasons had been an important fundamental fact, their sensory under-standing of their daily lives was vital and more immediate than any numbers on a calendar. As a result, while the change may not have had much impact on agricultural labour and individual work roles, it would have had a more deleterious effect on the solidarity of the community and its communications with the authorities. In my reckoning, it would have taken around a century for people to completely adjust to the new calendar. When I was a student in the late 1960s, calendars still showed the corre-sponding dates in the old (lunar) calendar in the corners. Even in calendars from the 1970s, the first and fifteenth day of each month still had a note of the lunar calendar days. That implies that some modes of life must still have existed for which these dates were still essential.
In today’s Japan, various calendrical compromises have been found, including delaying an event by
Modernity in the Folk Performing Arts: The impact of modernity
on the religious festival performing arts of the common people
K
ō
z
ō
Yamaji
Translated by Alan Cummings Abstract
How did the Japanese common people come to terms with the changes engendered by modernity? This article examines this question through the lens of kagura, a folk performing art that has been passed down within village communities since the late medieval period and which was performed at matsuri (village festivals), one of the few outlets that people had from their lives of toil. Specifically, I examine the case of Iwami kagura, a form that has been preserved in the western part of Shimane prefecture.
a month or holding festivities from the old calendar on the same day in the new calendar. Perhaps the only annual observance that is still scheduled using the lunar calendar is the moon viewing on the 15th
night of the eighth month. To give one example, the Gion Festival in Kyoto originally took place between the seventh and 14th days of the sixth month. Today it is held between the 17th and 24th of July.
These dates were fixed by picking the corresponding date in the new calendar for the dates that the festi-val would have been held on in 1873. But the festifesti-val only began being held on these dates from 1886, so they took ten years of trial and error to arrive at. It is easy to imagine the confusion that the common people of Kyoto must have experienced during this period of transition to modernity. However, the wide acceptance that the new calendar now enjoys is perhaps due to the fact that the old calendar itself was borrowed from the continent in the ancient period. In China, where this calendar was first devised, the beginning of each year is still celebrated at Lunar New Year, and other important annual holidays such as the Duanwu Festival and the Chung Yeung Festival still cling stubbornly to their lunar calendar dates. These are truly lunar calendar cultures.
In the late Tokugawa period, sumptuary laws that forbade commoners from wearing silk were imposed, but on formal occasions commoners were permitted to wear a black crested kimono with a haori. Townsmen and villagers would have accompanied a portable shrine dressed in this formal way with their hair dressed in a topknot. The sanpatsu dattō rei edict issued by the Great Council of State (Dajōkan) in 1871 permitted the cutting of topknots and discouraged the carrying of swords in public in order to encourage Japan’s Westernization. However, the order met resistance from the samurai class and the wearing of swords was permitted for a while longer. For the common people, the edict would have caused considerable bewilderment, since it ordered a direct change in one’s personal appearance.
In the 1960s when I was a high school and university student, stores selling hats were very com-mon. Even discounting those around universities that sold the caps worn by students, there were many shops that sold men’s hats. The hats were mostly fedoras and when I would visit festivals in the country-side, the functionaries would almost always be dressed in a crested kimono and haori topped off with a hat. How did hats, which were clearly a custom imported from the West, become so common in Japan? Why did the functionaries at village festivals in the depths of the mountains decide to wear hats with their crested kimono and haori? I believe that it was because commoners wished to conceal the sense of uneasiness they felt without the topknots that government regulation had required them to cut and hats quickly began to feel like a smart alternative. This style of dress became so common at rural festivals that it began to feel like a natural part of them.
The hats worn at village festivals can be read as one ad hoc response to the sudden materialization of modernity. The case study I discuss below, that of Iwami kagura, a folk performing art (minzoku geinō) from the village communities of the old province of Iwami in the western half of contemporary Shimane prefecture, presents a different aspect of the response to modernity.1 The long history of
matu-ration of this performance form during the Tokugawa period can explain how the form was able to change itself so smoothly and without any undue stress in its encounter with modernity.
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1 The term minzoku geinō is a post-war academic and administrative coinage for performing arts that are performed by ama-teurs as part of community festivals. In the pre-war period, these forms were popularly referred to as kyōdo buyō (provincial dances) and academically as minzoku geijutsu (folk arts).
Kagura as a folk performing art: What is kagura?
This article aims to interrogate the changes brought by modernity through the example of Iwami kagura, but before we begin, we need to clarify just what kagura is. Kagura is a folk performing art that has been preserved across all of Japan, but with considerable variations in its performance type depending on age and region, which frequently causes confusion in its interpretation.
The term kagura did not originally apply to a performing art. Rather it is a linguistic variation of the term kamikura, which refers to a place or object into which a deity (kami) is invited to descend. When the body of a ritually purified woman functions as the kamikura, it is referred to as miko kagura. A woman who possesses the ability to manifest a deity in her own body is known as a miko or kan’nagi. Likewise, when it is the head of a mythical lion (shishi) used in the lion-dance that becomes the tempo-rary lodging for the deity, the resulting form is called shishi kagura. But the most common type of kagura is known as torimono (handheld) kagura. In this type, an object held in the hand of a dancer becomes the kamikura. Different objects are commonly used: branches from a sakaki tree, plaited paper streamers (gohei), swords, bamboo, bows, halberds, ladles, straw matting, etc. The mikagura that was performed at the imperial palace in ancient times included this torimono dance as a central element, but by the mid-Heian period only torimono songs remained and most of the dances had ceased to be handed down. The only danced element that remained was one in which a master of ceremonies, known as the ninjō, would dance holding a sakaki branch with a ring attached to it.
As we can see in the palace mikagura, the most important part of these all-night performances became the entertainments that followed the torimono dance. The ninjō would summon artistically accomplished high-ranking courtiers, dancers, and attendants and they would perform popular forms of entertainment like saibara, azuma asobi, fūzoku uta, and sarugaku. Of course, the consumption of alco-hol was also a part of these events. It should be noted that these mikagura performances were fundamentally a type of entertainment performed in the presence of the emperor rather than a religious ritual. Accordingly, the divine possession (kamigakari) that would normally occupy the central part of a kagura performance was missing from mikagura. This may also explain why it was only the torimono songs rather than the dances that were passed down.
The original objective of kagura as a religious ritual, then, was to invite a deity to descend, then for the community to spend the night together with that deity enjoying entertainments, and finally to receive oracles from the deity. In the case of the imperial palace, there was a separate oracular ritual called the chinkonsai (meaning a rite for pacifying the souls of the dead) which involved the use of female mikanagi ritualists.
Sarugaku noh and kagura noh
Setting aside variants like miko kagura or shishi kagura that have a different form, when most Japanese think of kagura, their image is of the masked performance of stories involving deities and demons from the two early 8th century myth-histories, the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, that are performed across Kyushu,
western, central, eastern and northern Japan. In northern Japan, these performances are also known as yamabushi kagura or hōin kagura because they began to be performed from the late medieval period by the religious ascetics known as yamabushi. Their performances drew upon torimono kagura (torimono-mai) with the addition of elements borrowed from entertainments including sarugaku no noh (noh,
kyogen). Torimonomai (literally, torimono dance) involved a dance by an unmasked performer who holds one of the torimono objects as a yorishiro, a channel through which the god can enter. It was fol-lowed by an entertainment known as kagura noh, which featured masked performers. The use of the mask was a unique development, a special feature of sarugaku noh that enabled the performer to trans-form themselves into any kind of creature they chose and pertrans-form a story.
Sarugaku evolved out of a performing art called sangaku that was imported from the continent in the ancient period. Two specific elements of sangaku, dramatic imitation and transformation using masks, underwent a unique process of development in Japan and eventually developed into the perform-ing art known as sarugaku which was brought to a peak of perfection by the father and son Kan’ami and Zeami in the late 14th century. Kagura noh was created by Shugendō yamabushi who borrowed these
techniques and developed them, but the basic techniques remained very reminiscent of sarugaku noh. In terms of the essence of kagura, it remained an entertainment to be enjoyed during the night spent together with the manifested deity.
The fundamentals of the performances by yamabushi may have been similar, but this type of kagura saw different variations develop in each region. In some parts of northern Japan, groups of yamabushi would travel around the villages during a set season, praying as they danced in circles. In this case, because they used a lion’s head (which they referred to as Gongen) as the yorishiro (channel for divine communication), they didn’t place any importance on having a torimonomai. In that sense, this type of kagura noh should perhaps be classified as shishi kagura. However, the yamabushi would be lodged at the home of the major landowner in the village, where they would perform kagura noh in a reception room. This makes these performances qualitatively different to shishi kagura and closer to the techniques of torimono kagura.
The type of kagura that developed in the great city of Edo was mounted by performers known as kagurashi, who were under the control of the on’yōshi diviners. Kagurashi performed at Shintō shrines, often as part of the yudate ritual that involved the boiling of water. The kagurashi were originally placed under the control of the “masters of sacred dance” (shinjimai-dayū). This type of kagura would become known as sato kagura after they escaped the control of the shinjimai-dayū in the early Meiji period and there was talk of their performances being seen by the emperor. One theory suggests that it was the pos-sibility of an imperial performance that inspired them to rename their performances. In the end, the imperial performance failed to materialize. Edo kagura borrowed the techniques of sarugaku noh to per-form kagura, so in that sense they are similar but they removed the spoken and sung elements entirely, which makes it feel more like pantomime. In addition, the boiling of water is included as a purificatory ritual but the religious aspect of kagura noh is very minor and there is no use of torimonomai to summon the deity. We can therefore describe it as a form of kagura that strongly emphasizes the entertainment aspect.
The characteristics of kagura performed by yamabushi
To locate remnants of the kagura developed by yamabushi (religious ascetics) in the late medieval period that have lingered into the contemporary period, one must look to kagura performed in the Abe and Ōi river basins in Shizuoka and further west. However, the Hana matsuri and Shimotsuki kagura types per-formed in the mountain villages of Mikawa, Tōtomi, and Shinano2 developed differently so should be
areas3, so to locate it again one must look further westwards, to the Chūgoku region (Western end of
Honshū Island), to Shikoku, and to Kyushu. The characteristics of this type of kagura are as follows: 1. The space where the kagura is performed is beautifully decorated with sheets of five-coloured
paper. In the middle of the ceiling is a canopy, and the supporting beams are decorated with strips of paper.
2. In the first part of the performance, an unmasked performer dances a torimonomai. 3. Masked gods and demons appear and perform kagura noh.
4. In the middle of the kagura, someone will become divinely possessed and deliver oracles. 5. Before the Edo period, the performers would all have been yamabushi and perhaps some miko
(female spirit mediums).4
6. Performances did not happen at reisai (annual festival), but rather at the shikinensai (festivals held once every few years), or else they would be performed as an all-night performance for some specific purpose.
During the course of the Edo period, different regional variations were then added to these basic charac-teristics. Different Shugendō5 groups tended to create their own unique variations so they can be broadly
classified by province.
At the start of the Edo period, the bakufu (the samurai government) instituted religious policies which required performers of kagura to receive a letter of sanction from Yoshida Shintō and they were reclassified as Shintō priests attached to specific regional shrines. This in turn meant that their perfor-mances because regularized as annual reisai rites. In order to mount the periodic shikinensai kagura performances, organizations that brought together priests from several shrines in the same area were cre-ated and they continued to perform a type of kagura that possessed a strong yamabushi flavour and which preserved the six medieval characteristics listed above. However, these performances had reduced participation by female miko.
In the contemporary Chūgoku region (the western end of Honshū Island), the kagura that fall into this category would include Bitchū kagura, Bingo kagura, Izumo kagura, Iwami kagura, Oki kagura, Aki kagura (Geihoku kagura and the forms found along the Inland Sea), and Bōchō kagura. Of these, Oki kagura is the only one that has preserved participation by miko to the present day. In Kyushu, sev-eral types are referred to the names of the old provinces (Iki kagura, Buzen kagura, Hyūga kagura, Higo kagura, etc.), but the majority are referred to the names of the localities where they are located (Takachiho kagura, Shiiba kagura, Shiromi kagura, Aso kagura, Kuma kagura, etc). On the island of Tsushima, the performance of kagura has died out but there is still a tradition of miko who are known locally as myōbu.
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2 Editor’s note: Mikawa, Tōtomi, and Shinano correspond to parts of Aichi, Shizuoka, and Nagano Prefectures today. 3 Editor’s note: The Kinki area covers the region around Kyoto and Osaka, former cultural centers while the Hokuriku area
is located in the north-east of Kinki, and has been under the influence of Kyoto culture.
4 Prior to the early modern period, it was normal for miko to participate in kagura, and it is thought that the possession and the communication of oracles would have been performed exclusively by miko. As we enter the Tokugawa period, they rap-idly begin to vanish. Today, these roles are still performed by miko in Oki kagura. In Iwami kagura too, there is a reference to a miko performing the role of a heavenly maiden (tennyo) in 1771 in Ōmoto kagura yakushichō, preserved at Takakurayama Hachimangū in Gōtsu. (Gōtsu Shishi 1982, vol.2).
5 Editor’s note: Shugendō is a system of syncretic and ascetic practices made in the deep mountains. Practitioners are referred to as yamabushi (which literally means Mountain Prostrator).
Why Iwami kagura?
All of the forms of kagura that I have listed above encountered the new modern age, and each of them was transformed by it in unique ways to create their current form. However, one question that I have not yet addressed is why I have chosen to focus on Iwami kagura to argue the effect on modernity on Japan’s folk performing arts. But before I explain that decision, it must be stated that all forms of kagura faced several identical and unavoidable problems in their encounter with modernity. The first of these is that, following the proclamation of the Imperial Restoration of 1867, Shintō emerged as a state religion and its shrine workers became subject to new forms of regulation. The Office of Divinity (Jingikan) was established the following year in 1868, and alongside the order to separate Shintō from Buddhism, the chief priests of every shrine in the nation were attached to the Office.
While there were certainly many exceptions, kagura had been performed originally by Shugendō yamabushi and later during the Tokugawa period by Shintō priests who had been placed under the authority of Yoshida Shintō. Village shrine priests who had danced kagura and performed religious rites and specific prayers at small shrines in the provinces found themselves, thanks to the restoration of saisei itchi (“the unity of religion and government), suddenly attached to the Office of Divinity (in September 1871 renamed the Jingishō, the Ministry of Divinity). In addition, in 1871 the Great Council of State issued a system of shrine rankings with Ise Jingū at the top. Under the so-called gōsha teisoku definitions (regulations for local shrines), shrines were classified hierarchically into gōsha (regional shrines), sonsha (village shrines), and mukakusha (unattended shrines).
The policies of the Ministry of Divinity provoked much opposition at the time so it is difficult to know how widely they were adopted, but on February 14, 1871 a communique was issued that read, “it has long been our wish that the obscene dancing of kagura in sacred shrine precincts should henceforth be banned” (Hōki bunrui taizen, vol.26). Later, in an official bulletin published by the Kyōbushō (Ministry of Instruction) on January 15, 1873:
For many years, diviners (azusa miko) and shrine maidens (ichiko) have used techniques to bewitch the people, including possession rituals, fortune-telling, fox exorcism (kitsune sage), and speaking with the dead. These acts are henceforth banned and local officials must make note of this order and vigorously clamp down on such activities.6
This regulation would seem to have issued a comprehensive ban on acts of possession and prophecy. In 1875, the Great Council of State issued an order that regularized the types of rituals that could be per-formed at shrines ranking below jingū in the hierarchical system, and a system of regularized, unified ritual that still prevails today slowly spread across Japan.
Which brings us back to Iwami kagura. Like other shrines across Japan, it accepted the wave of religious reforms, including the measures listed above, that were instituted by the Meiji government. However, the case of Iwami kagura allows us to use documentary evidence to trace the ways that some localities managed to largely preserve the kagura of the Tokugawa period, while others created new forms of kagura that better matched the reforms of modernity. It is for this reason that I have chosen to ———————————————————————————————
6 The Ministry of Instruction was established in 1872 to regulate religion. It dispatched preceptors (kyōdōshi) throughout the country in order to oversee the reform of Shintō shrines, before being abolished in 1877. Its functions were taken over by the Bureau of Shrines & Temples (Shajikyoku) of the Home Ministry.
focus on the folk performing art of kagura.
One of these sources is a detailed record of village festivals written by Yoshimichi Takezaki, who was born and brought up in Hara village (now named Ōnan) in the Ōchi district of Iwami during the final years of the Tokugawa period. Takezaki’s record was published under the title “Village Festivals” (Mura no matsuri) in Kyōdo Kenkyū (volume 3, issue 9, November 1915), the journal published by the Local Studies Association (Kyōdo Kenkyūkai) that had been founded by Kunio Yanagita7. The text provides a
comprehensive record of the reality of the kagura performances that occurred as part of village festivals in the transition from late Tokugawa into the Meiji period.8
My home is in the Ōchi district of Iwami… At the time of the reisai dedicated to our tutelary deities, every year both rich and poor would spend a large amount of money on making appro-priate new clothing called matsurigo, or changing their tatami mats or replacing the paper on their sliding doors… The festival would normally begin in the evening and continue into the next day. In the evening before the festival began, at least five or six Shintō priests would assemble and make offerings and then they would dance a shichiza kagura. This kagura was always performed by the priests.
This section of the text describes the annual reisai. He explains that regular festivals at the time were officiated at by five or six priests from villages in the local area, and we also learn that only the unmasked torimonomai, shichiza no kagura was performed by these priests. He also touches on the shi-kinensai, which were performed once every few years.
…in addition, there was a kagura known as the shikinen no kagura. Of course, every form of music, song or dance that is performed before the kami is kagura, but there was a custom of referring to the shikinen performances in particular as kagura. It was performed once every five or seven years, and it was also known as Ōmoto kagura.
As you can see, he emphasizes that when the villagers in Ōchi where Takezaki grew up referred to kagura, they were thinking of the shikinen grand ōkagura (literally “big kagura”) that was performed once every five or seven years, i.e. Ōmoto kagura.
On the occasions when that ōkagura was to be held, it took place either in an existing dancing hall (maidono) (or in some areas, in a newly built temporary structure). Box seats (sajiki) to hold the maximum number of villagers were constructed along three sides. The allocation of these box seats was extremely contentious but it followed historical precedent. There were separate box seats for participating officials, but some of the oldest families in the district would show great pride in their ownership of a box seat, even if their fortunes had since declined… The musical instruments used were the hip drum (ōtsuzumi), shoulder drum (kotsu-zumi), flute, and handclaps. There were some songs worth hearing but they were not old ones. The dance did not differ substantially to what is performed around Tokyo, but woven into it ———————————————————————————————
7 Editor’s note: Kunio Yanagita (1875-1962) is one of the founders of Japanese folkloric studies.
8 I have already used this source in another article “Iwami kagura no tanjō” [The birth of Iwami kagura] in Minzoku geinō kenkyū, [Study of Folk Performing Arts], Vol. 56. March 2014.
were some old elements from the age of the gods and some historically famous sections, and the music drew upon noh and kyōgen, which lent it a more elegant air than what is performed in Tokyo.
Takezaki seems to have seen the sato kagura of Tokyo (Edo), and it is fascinating that he perceives a greater elegance in the kagura of his home village. He continues,
…there was another type of kagura known as takumai that was performed across the region as part of ōkagura (big kagura) performances. Of course, this was little different to a childish game, but at the time it was viewed as being important and it also allows us a glimpse of one aspect of popular belief. Taku refers to shintaku (divine oracle), and one person would be appointed as saniwa, they would invite the kami to possess someone, and then ask them vari-ous questions. The priest appointed as the saniwa or takudayū was naturally one from a hereditary line, as was the functionary known as the koshikakae (literally “waist holder”) who accompanied him. The necessary equipment for the takumai was a large shimenawa (ritual rope), one end of which was made up to look like a dragon, and which would be suspended from the pillar to the left of the altar to the opposing pillar. (This large shimenawa was some-times not used for takumai (oracle dance), but it would always be present for the ōkagura, where it was referred to as the takunawa). In the middle of the night, the saniwa is seated in the position of importance and a large number of priests take hold of the rope, paper streamers are held, songs are sung, and prayers are recited. After some time, the expression on the sani-wa’s face suddenly changes and he begins to speak in a loud voice. He will babble about the sins of this villager, how that villager is lacking in belief, in which directions natural disasters will occur in the coming year, and sometimes there will be a question and answer session on various topics with the master of the festival (saishu). Sometimes he would leap into the audi-ence seats and even injure some of the participants. When that happened, the koshikakae would hold and calm him. I myself participated in this ritual three or four times, but each time it was so terrifying that I would go off and lie in a corner. But even then I was dubious and when I asked one of my teachers if whether the kami really possessed the saniwa, he only smiled and would say no more. That made me feel less anxious. No one today would still question whether these kinds of rituals are real or fake, but back then even devout Buddhists had not the tiniest of suspicions and they looked upon it as a holy ritual…
However, all of the proceeding description was of the situation before the Meiji Restoration. Now, kagura has become a type of profession and since it is performed by farmers, it gets referred to as the farmers’ dance (hyakushōmai) and of course, nothing like the takumai is now performed. Now all of the rituals performed at shrines are determined by the Home Ministry, but I wonder if it just an old man’s bias that makes me feel there was something more rigorous about these rituals before the Restoration.
As we can see, the central element of the periodic festivals was the communication of oracles by the means of divine possession (kamigakari) and that in particular was the whole purpose of performing kagura. However, as Takezaki notes at the end of this extract, that was how the ritual was performed before the Meiji Restoration and after the Restoration, Shintō priests ceased to perform kagura. As I
have already stated the reason for this change was the order banning kagura performances by Shintō priests issued by the Meiji government, and the banning of oracles and spirit possession.
The divine possession (kamigakari) in Ōmoto kagura.
However, in spite of these regulations, kagura did not die out. Rather, the roles previously performed by Shintō priests were taken over by farmers from the local villages. Takezaki describes this form of kagura as “farmers’ dance” and he points out that kagura has now become professionalized, which points to the fact that within ten years of the Meiji Restoration, kagura was already being performed by farmers. Of course, the ritual elements would still be performed by priests, and there were other elements such as the divine possession and oracles that couldn’t have been handled by the farmers. But the entertainment ele-ments including the kagura noh were soon being performed enthusiastically by the local farmers.
One reason for this was the farmers were already economically and psychologically mature. At the time, farmers seem not to have been strongly drawn to torimonomai (ritualistic kagura with hand-held objects) such as the shichiza no shinji that was performed as part of the reisai. But we can easily imagine that they would have been keen to take leading roles in the dramatic kagura noh of the shikinensai, where they could wear masks to transform into kami or demons, wear gorgeous costumes, and perform in vigorous stage fight scenes. That desire would have been particularly strong in the younger generation who took an active role in the preparations for the festivals through informal youth organizations such as the wakamonogumi. According to the research of Hiroo Fujiwara, it seems the younger members of coastal communities in Iwami had already begun to organize kagura performance groups before the end of the Tokugawa period.9 These efforts were put a stop to by village headman and local officials, but we
can see here evidence of a deeply rooted desire among agricultural communities to perform kagura themselves.10 We can also surmise that it was the kagura noh entertainments that they wished to perform,
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9 Hiroo Fujiwara. “Shimane-ken Hamada-shi ni okeru Edo makki kara Meiji-ki ni kakete no kagura jijō” [The state of kagura in Hamada-shi, Shimane from the late Edo to Meiji periods] in Minzoku geinō kenkyū [Study of Folk Performing Arts], no.60, 2016.
not the ritual elements that make up the essence of kagura.
The banning of performances of kagura by Shintō priests in early Meiji can not only be seen in the communiques issued by the Ministry of Instruction mentioned earlier. While I am not aware of any regu-lations issued directly to shrine priests by the Ministry of Divinity or the Ministry of Instruction, during this period the newly appointed preceptors (kyōdōshi) travelled throughout each region to teach the new format for shrine rituals and it seems that they also notified shrines of the ban on priests performing kagura.
On the other hand, the farmers were more interested in performing the entertainment-orientated kagura noh, rather than kagura as ritual. They formed kagura performance troupes and travelled around local village shrines to perform kagura noh at their reisai. The troupes received monetary presents (hana) from the audiences at these performances, which they then used to create more elaborate costumes and to buy additional masks. Of course, it was the shrine priests who had transmitted kagura noh to the farm-ers and there is evidence that they were active in teaching it to the farmfarm-ers when they became unable to perform it themselves. They would also have passed down the masks and costumes that they had used themselves.
In this way, Iwami kagura underwent a significant change in the late 1870s and early 1880s, and the same can no doubt be said about kagura in other regions too. For Iwami kagura, one major change was the performance of kagura noh by these troupes at not just the shikinensai but also at the annual reisai. Shrine patrons (ujiko) would pay a performance fee to the kagura troupe, villagers would shower them with tips, and in return the troupes would respond to their requests for special performances of kagura noh. This was, in effect, the complete transformation of kagura into entertainment. Conversely, this change also meant the loss of the divine possession and oracle elements of the shikinensai. In many places, the shikinensai even ceased to be performed altogether.
The emphasis on the entertainment aspects was particularly marked in the kagura from the coastal communities of Iwami. Around the turn of the century, for example, there were innovations with acceler-ated tempos (a move from a six-beat to an eight-beat rhythm). In order to dance more effectively with these quicker tempos, performers began to discard their old wooden masks and experiment with lighter paper masks made from Iwami washi. The move to paper also allowed for the creation of much larger masks. Around 1907, the technology used in paper lanterns was adapted to create a spectacular body for the snake that appears in one of the most popular of the kagura noh plays, Yamata no orochi. This great snake body would go on to become a major symbol of Iwami kagura. However, the kagura troupes cre-ated by the farmers were also subject to the economic vagaries of the period and not all of them survived. At the same, there remained some areas where, in spite of the ban on Shintō priests performing kagura, priests continued to perform the shikinensai. Particularly in some areas of the Ōchi and Naka districts, this type of kagura is referred to today as Ōmoto kagura to distinguish it from other types. As we can from Takezaki’s account, this type of kagura ceased to be performed after the Restoration in the mountain villages in the interior of Ōchi where he lived. However, one kagura troupe made up of shrine priests from areas around the lower reaches of the Gōnokawa River (the township districts formerly known as Sakurae, Kawamoto, and Hinui, etc.), and another older troupe in Naka (Asahi), were able to keep on performing at shikinensai in several villages in the same way as they had since the Tokugawa ———————————————————————————————
10 We know that young people from the village of Hosoya near contemporary Hamada city, for example, performed kagura from the early Tenpō period (1831-1845) since there is a reference to it in the “Kaguramai ruiji ryūkō ni tsuki haishi no ken” [The Affair concerning the ban of popular pseudo kagura dances] from 1887.
period. In villages where farmers’ kagura troupes had been created, the priests would relinquish the per-formance of kagura noh, but in several villages they were able to preserve the perper-formance of divine possession and oracles. Formerly the majority of the rituals leading up to the oracles had been performed by shrine priests and this structure was preserved in Ōmoto kagura. Accordingly, we can say that it is Ōmoto kagura that best preserves the pre-Restoration form of Iwami kagura. In most types of Iwami kagura, however, that original form has been lost, falling victim to the process I outlined above: the Meiji ban on performances by priests and divine oracles which led to the loss of the tradition of shiki-nensai, and the subsequent creation of farmers’ kagura troupes that emphasized the kagura noh element alone.
There would be further major changes that overtook Iwami kagura during the post-war period of economic growth. One was the consolidation of kagura scripts that took place following the publication in 1954 of Kōtei Iwami kagura daihon (Revised scripts for Iwami kagura). Another was the use of increasingly luxurious costumes. Originally the costumes for kagura noh were primarily made of dyed cotton, but the desire for showier costumes became more marked after the farmers started to perform kagura. From the mid 1920s, they began to create more gorgeous kagura costumes using the same kinds of gold and silver embroidery that are found in the futon mikoshi of Imabari in Ehime prefecture. In the post-war periods, these costumes became ever more elaborate as the kagura troupes began to compete with each other over the richness of their costumes. The use of fireworks to mark the entrance of demonic characters had already begun before the war, and we also know that the use of the quick cos-tume change technique called bukkaeri seems to have been borrowed early on from kabuki. There is also research that argues that the first use of multiple great snakes in Yamata no orochi began in performances at the festival square at the Osaka World’s Fair in 1970.11
Iwami kagura today is an example of a folk performing art that has been successfully marketed to tourists by the tourism industry, with the local government playing a leading role. Of course, this is no longer kagura as a Shintō performing art, rather it is nothing more the contemporary manifestation of those farmers’ kagura troupes that were created by the Meiji Restoration to perform the entertainments that had once fallen within the purview of Shintō priests.
Kōzō Yamaji is a researcher at the Kyoto Human Rights Research Institute, specialising in Japanese theatre history, folk performing arts, and the history of discrimination. His major works include: Okina no za: geinōmin tachi no
chūsei [The Place of Okina: the Middle Ages and Performing Artists] (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1990); Kinsei geinō no taidō [The Quickening of Early Modern Performing Arts] (Tokyo: Yagi shoten, 2010); and Chūsei geinō no teiryū
[The Undercurrents of Medieval Performing Arts] (Tokyo: Iwata shoin, 2010).
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11 Satoru Hyōki. “Yatsugashira no orochi ga tadotte kita michi – Iwami kagura ‘orochi’ no Ōsaka banpaku shutsuen to sono eikyō.” [The path trodden by the eight-headed serpent: The serpent performance at Osaka Expo’70 and its influence]. In Iwami kagura no sōzōsei ni kansuru kenkyū. [Creativity in Iwami kagura]. Matsue: Shimane-ken kodai bunka sentā [Shimane Prefectural Center of Ancient Cultures], 2013.
