神楽/Kagura (Divine Music)

Kagura is the oldest form of theatre in Japan, the source of both Noh and Kabuki [歌舞伎]. Kagura began when the Goddess Amaterasu, who was sulking in her cave, was enticed out by the dancing of another goddess, Ama-no-Uzume. While Noh and Kabuki have been primarily the domain of professional performers, Kagura has remained folk theatre, something that country people do at certain times of the year.

It survives in several of the counties in Kumamoto, and I had seen it at Hirakawa, the home village of Y’s father.

There is almost no dialogue; it consists of short, dance-mime plays with masks,costumes and strong, rhythmic music played on fifes and drums. Devils, red-masked with fiery ginger locks, rush around and frighten children.

The quasi-federal division of Japan into “prefectures” means that you seldom hear of events or places, however close they might be, if they happen to be in another prefecture.

Takachiho is a mountain county, just across the border from Aso [阿蘇], the volcanic zone at the Eastern end of Kumamoto, our prefecture.

Someone had told Y that there was Kagura in Takachiho[高千穂], and we decided to go. However, no one in Kumamoto could tell us anything about it.

Takachiho was further into the mountains than Hirakawa and I thought that their kagura would be that much deeper and more significant. Unlike the hour-long kagura in Aso, the performances in Takachiho come in massive, mid-winter binges, each lasting from sunset to the following sunrise. These sessions take place three or four times a year.

There seemed no point in arranging accommodation since the show was to last all night. We decided to travel up in the afternoon and catch a bus back the following morning. We caught the train up to Tateno [立野], on the western entrance to the Aso Caldera, changed to the private Takemori [竹森] railway,and then caught a bus up, over the eastern rim of the caldera into the mountains of Miyazaki [宮崎].

The bus driver told us where to get off, and we soon found the kagura. We had arrived too late to see the procession to the local shrine which preceded each performance.

The performance took place in one of the local farmhouses. One of the sides of the house had been opened, and a kind of platform built outside. One of the rooms of the house was used as the stage, with the spectators watching from the adjoining room, or from the platform outside.

By the time we arrived, the performance was already underway. It continued without a break for the next fourteen hours. There were no more than ten performers, and many of them were no longer young. Even though only two or three might be on stage at any one time, it was still a marathon, demanding enormous stamina.

Apart from plays involving demons and gods, there were domestic dramas, involving jealous husbands and domineering wives, all presented in rhythmic pantomime.

There was no shelter for the audience, except for the lucky few who could squeeze into the house. Although there was neither wind nor rain, it was soon bitterly cold. The only protection against the elements came from several braziers, and from the staple alcohol of rural Japanese men, shouchuu [焼酎]. It is the Japanese equivalent of poteen, distilled from potatoes but, unlike its Irish cousin, legal. I don’t usually drink it, but in those circumstances found it irresistible. It was heated in long, bamboo sticks, which were thrust green into the coals of the fire, and drunk directly from the bamboo, which was passed around the circle of freezing spectators. The bottom of the stick was charred and obviously had a limited lifespan, but the mountains are full of bamboo.

As the night wore on, the amount of shouchuu consumed by both performers and spectators reached a threshold point, beyond which performance values ceded before a pervading sense of benevolent camaraderie.

. The content of the plays became more sexually explicit and had the audience falling about in their enjoyment. By three or four in the morning, I realised that ring-ins were standing (dancing?) in for the home team of performers and, before long I was being asked to take a turn on the stage.

I was kitted out as a devil, which, with long nose and flaming red hair, gave credence to the legend that he and his fellow Japanese demons had Celtic ancestry. I did Te Rauparaha’s haka, like so many Pakeha, drawing on Maori culture at key moments.

We spoke to one of the performers. I said how wonderful it was that this ancient tradition had been carried on unbroken for what must have been more than a thousand years. He said that it wasn’t exactly unbroken as it had died out in the early twentieth century, and had been revived only after the war.

I said it was a pity that so few people in Kumamoto knew about the Takachiho kagura, and asked if they ever came to Kumamoto. The kagura man said they had never been to Kumamoto to perform. However, my image of an isolated, rural community was shattered a few moments later when he said that they went to Paris every year to perform in a world arts festival there. Takachiho/the World. Like Butoh, Ninagawa and Suzuki Tadashi, you have more chance of seeing Kagura in the capitals of the culture world than you do in most Japanese cities.

I have only the haziest of memories of the last few hours at Takachiho, and may have fallen asleep huddled on the tatami in a corner of the house. At nine o’clock we caught the bus back over the hill to Kumamoto.