Thu, Oct 20, 2022
Under the autumn blue sky, where ears of rice were beginning to turn yellow, local residents of the Sabumi district of Manno, Kagawa Pref., were excited about a certain event coming back to their town. The traditional Ayako Odori rain dance was resumed on Sept. 4, 2022, after a four-year suspension due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The rain dance, performed biennially at the local Kamo-jinja shrine, is an important intangible folk cultural property of Japan. It has its origins in the Heian period, when locals prayed for rain dancing during a severe drought following suggestions from an itinerant priest. It worked, and brought a downpour. The priest was none other than Kukai (posthumously called Kobo Daishi), who founded the esoteric Shingon school of Buddhism. Kukai is known to have rebuilt the Manno Pond (Manno-ike irrigation reservoir), the township’s namesake.
That the rain dance can be traced back to Kukai is recorded in documents from the Edo period. The Association for the Preservation of the Ayako Odori Dance in Sabumi is at the center of the community’s preservation effort. Local boys perform the Ayako Odori to kouta (traditional ballad music) dressed in furisode (long-sleeved kimono) after purifying the shrine’s precinct by wielding sticks and naginata (a pole weapon like the halberd).
The Ayako Odori, said to have an important place in the history of the performing arts, had to struggle with a shortage of performers in the postwar period. However, with the foundation of the preservation association in 1968, the community found ways to train local children to dance. The 2020 festival had to be skipped due to the pandemic, but the locals managed to resume the event this year implementing strict infection-control measures.
Ayako Odori is one of the furyu odori (defined as “ritual dances imbued with people’s hopes and prayers”) the Japanese government is trying to add to the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun and other sources)
0%
