9.(29-31) Culture Comes to the Village

Slim Novel 9 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com  -  See Homepage

29. Kangi-no-ha

Next evening Kimi and Headman give the recital. Headman will narrate as in a Noh play and do musical accompaniment while Kimi does dance and gesture. The villagers kneel on their shins on fiber mats on the beach, facing the incoming surf of the sea. A stage is set up just above the high tide line on a wood stand, 7 meters across, 3 meters depth, and a half-meter off ground; and the floor is hay-color rush mat tatami. Behind the stage, an 8-panel unfolded screen shows light blue background looking like white foam-top waves and long-neck cranes.

   Late in afternoon with setting sun slanting over backs of villagers, Headman and Kimi take places on 2 folding stools, he at the audience's right front to her center stage. Kimi wears a pale blue kimono with traditional long hanging forearm sleeves, and tied in place by 3-finger width black silk sash. She has no sandals or socks. Her black hair is covered by black net cap whose end hangs halfway down her back.

   Headman begins with explanation of the first piece, a type called gagaku. Having been originally imported from China, it became the music of the old Imperial Court, the Buddhist temples and the Shinto Shrines nearly 1000 years ago. In China, the gagaku was cosmopolitan, since China then had peoples from western Asia playing their music at the Imperial Court but the gagaku that was imported into Japan became stiff and formal because it was only performed for court or religious purpose.

   Kimi sits head down and hands lying flatly across each other on thighs. At end of Headman’s explanation, an assistant hands him the sho, a 17-pipe lacquered, gourd mouth-organ, the pipes about a third of a meter extending vertically downward and blown like an ocarina. No one except specialists can play it. He sits, feet planted flat and angled apart at heels, body rigidly facing forward, the sho held in front of his face in both hands, his lips applied tightly over the opening in the sho's side.

   The Villagers sit silent waiting in the long shadows cast before them by a red lowering sun. Headman takes a breath and the music comes out: whistling, flute-like, ethereal. Time seems stopped then reversed and for a hypnotic instant the stage seems illumined in the sunset by a purple light. Now a wraith-like dancer in blue yukata gown moves slowly in front of an imagined scene of a coarse drunk fair-skinned Scythian beside the Golden Chinese Emperor and bejeweled courtiers who hide their laughter at the drunken foreigner behind archly raised fans.
   Headman blows the final note of Kangi-no-ha, Kimi returns to seated pose and the Villagers, appreciative of the beauty and also thankful for the glimpse given them of the past culture, reward with their highest gesture of praise – silent bows.

30. Tokiwazu

Next Tokiwazu, a Kabuki traditional drama of 300 years ago Edo Period. Accompaniment is 3-string samisen. The piece is Feathered Robe – from a famous play about a fisherman who on way home finds a feathered robe hanging on branch of pine tree. He tries to remove it but an angel who has been swimming in nearby cove appears and pleads with him not to make off with it because it is her only way of getting back to heaven. After arguing he says Yes to her request and in her joy she dances to gagaku.

   Headman and Kimi bow to the Villagers who bow back; then he strikes first note on the samisen. The Villagers sit hands folded on laps and lean forward with serious expressions and eyes shut listening as he gradually builds up dramatic tension. He begins in deep voice using the ancient language in stylized way typical of Edo Period. As his singing narration unfolds the dark behind the collective closed eyes of the audience is lit by a brilliant sun revealing a tree with pink blossoms on which a robe of sky-blue feathers hangs, also a handsome fisher lad reaching for the robe and an un-draped angel on knees pleading. Her features are unclear and a golden haze enshrouds her nakedness but as she arises and dances for the lad her face clarifies. It is Kimi.
   Headman's voice trails off and the Villagers open their eyes and there on stage is Kimi, dancing to the ancient melody that he plays on a long bamboo flute. She dances slowly, extended arms expressing the action by delicately moving fingers, and the dance ends with Kimi kneeling, hands before face, in exquisite supplication.

31, Objet d’Art

Next is Shochoku chamber music written by blind musicians hundreds of years ago and performed in homes but later added to with story text sung in accompaniment in theater. It uses the lyre-like koto and the shakuhachi, an end-blown flute.

   The piece is Pinewinds. Headman explains the singing text written by someone in the lordly Date (pronounced Dahteh) family to lessen a wife’s grief at losing her husband and it tells of her sadness and longing for the departed and is mannered and includes references to musical instruments and playing technique. It also makes reference to a gagaku piece lost to tradition 500 years before and this leads to an instrumental interlude of unusual character initiating the gagaku.

   While Headman explains, Kimi goes to change and returns in traditional kimono of white silk with green leaf design and red obi belt. She bows to audience and sits on shins behind a koto, a rectangular musical instrument of grainy wood 2-meters long, 1-meter wide and with wood legs that raise it 25 centimeters above the floor, and its 13 catgut strings are stretched tautly over ivory crosspieces extending diagonally across its box. She tunes up using her right thumb, index and middle fingertips, attaching small picks that she uses to snap the strings while pressing with bare flats of fingers of left hand to produce lightened tension. She begins the piece which turns out the most musical of all and with Headman accompanying on shakuhachi she plays deftly while chanting a long-ago-and-faraway tale. The music ends in a strumming arpeggio suggesting violent emotion.

   The Villagers sit stunned by the soul Kimi puts into her playing. A paid critic might note that while hers is not a professionally polished performance, what is lacking in gloss is made up for in sincerity and authenticity from her performer's feeling being one with the audience.
   It suggests to some that all art should be amateur in the best sense of that word, a true, sincere art of people at work and play, not done for pay but for the satisfaction of joyful leisure.

   Kimi and Headman stand, bow and leave the stage. As Village lads start dismantling the boards and women leave to attend to the feast to follow, the Headman says to Kimi.
   “Daughter of our Village you have given the people a glimpse of beauty and recalled for them their culture. Please accept my admiration.”

   From this time on, the Villagers regard Kimi in a new light. The incident from childhood, they realize, deflected her life so as to produce an Objet d’Art, a small but significant piece of beauty they are lucky to have now for each villager's individual instant in cosmic time.
   To read on, click 9.(32-33) Kimi & Jun - Nature Has Its Way