Okinawa — Blog 1 — JapanCultureNYC

This year renowned dancer, dance educator, and choreographer Sachiyo Ito has been serializing her memoir on JapanCulture•NYC with monthly installments, each chapter revealing a different aspect of her early life in Tokyo and career in New York City.

Ito offers of a profound exploration of the experience of dedicating herself to traditional Japanese dance at an early age, arriving in New York City during the tumultuous ‘70s, and making a successful career in the arts. Each chapter offers a glimpse into the complexities that shaped her journey. It is a literary examination of not only Ito Sensei’s life, but of how New York City’s culture evolved over the decades and what sacrifices one must make to achieve a thriving career in the arts.

The memoir is an invitation to delve into the layers of a creative life and career that has spanned more than 50 years. As a work in progress, it is also an invitation for you to offer your feedback. Your insights will contribute to the evolution of this extraordinary work.

To read all the chapters, please click here. For more information about Sachiyo Ito, please visit her website, dancejapan.com.

Summer Festivals and My Roots

August is the time of O-bon holidays, when the Japanese honor their ancestors and welcome their spirits home to visit. My childhood memories of this time are of visiting the cemetery with lanterns, and being scared by fireworks under my geta clog, thrown by neighborhood boys. We children half believed we could talk to our deceased grandma or granddad. These were sweet and innocent times, and each year, the summer breeze brings them to mind.

O-bon developed as Japanese traditional beliefs and Buddhist customs of honoring ancestors merged. A holiday known for its large bonfires, O-bon coincides with Natsu Matsuri, or local summer festivals. These festivities of music and dance meant to welcome the spirits of the ancestors are a time of vigor and energy, which seems contradictory to traditional Japanese culture’s emphasis on reserved manners and maintaining grace and subtlety. Sometimes they can get quite rowdy; in the town of Nishimonai, which I visited in 1974, I heard there had been drunken clashes between the carriers of the mikoshi, a portable shrine, and the villagers, resulting in at least one death. Perhaps, being subdued for most of the year, people need time to unleash their pent-up energy. Even into the 1960s and ‘70s, countryside areas focused on farming and fishing maintained very traditional lifestyles, where liberties could not often be taken. Festivals in Tokyo, where one could find more freedom of expression in daily life, seemed to tend to be calmer.

Minzoku Geinoh (Performance Folk Art)

Learning about, or rather, peeking through the door into a new world of dance, culture, and art in New York from 1972 to 1974 made me think closely about the roots of my own dance form. Back then, I only knew about the precedent to Kabuki, which is the Noh Theater, and had very limited knowledge on anything earlier. I realized that I was insufficiently equipped with the resources and knowledge I would need to continue my mission of introducing Japanese dance to wider audiences, and I felt an urgency to know where my own tradition came from. Upon finishing my MA in Dance at NYU in 1974, I returned to Tokyo from New York, and embarked on a journey to investigate the roots of Japanese classical dance so that I could discuss my dance tradition with American audiences and students in more depth.

In my quest for knowledge, I turned first to Minzoku Geinoh, the performance folk art, from which Kabuki — and eventually Nihon Buyo, the classical dance – developed. This led me to my next focus: Okinawan dance and culture, which has preserved early Japanese traditions while maintaining its unique cultural identity. My investigations into Okinawan dance led to my doctoral research in the 1980s.

Minzoku Geinoh has led to many traditions that are still alive and vibrant around Japan. I could not have discovered everything I did without the help of many people. Reflecting on it now, there were so many people I interviewed who did not mind sparing their time, giving me guidance, and teaching me the richness of the Japanese heritage.

My first guide through performing arts festivals — in the 1970s, there were many as 10,000 around the country — was Dr. Haruo Misumi. He is a well-known scholar on folk ethnology and a proficient prolific writer of many books on the performing arts. He recommended several festivals to me where I could witness the most beautiful and significant dances in searching for the roots of Japanese dance.

One of them was Nekko no Bangaku in Akita Prefecture. I had an interview with older performers and musicians, and it saddened me when they expressed their concern that there would be no more people who could transmit the traditions of their music after they died. Although the young people from the village were required to perform Bangaku at the local festival, none of them had learned the old music. It was not yet the millennium, but the 1970s, and the disruption of the transmission of old folk traditions from one generation to the next was already happening around the country. Now, with renewed recognition of traditions, I hope younger generations have regained the energy for performing, despite the difficulty of passing down an oral tradition.

In another distant area, Shiraishi‐jima Island in the Seto Inland Sea, the villagers welcome and send off their ancestral spirits (at) with their version of Bon Odori, Shiraishi Odori, during the summertime. My guide that night was an old lady. That evening was so beautiful; we were on the beach, and danced there in the moonlight. From time to time, she would sit on a straw mat to rest, while I listened to her delightful stories of her dancing in the festivals in the past.

I also made a visit to Gujo City in Gifu Prefecture to see their summer celebration. Gujo Odori is known for having a wide variety of Bon Odori dances and songs. Walking around, I was surprised to see many shops selling geta, or traditional wooden sandals, in the city. Why? Supposedly, after dancing all night, the dancers would have worn their geta out! One woman I interviewed told me her memory of dancing all night long. When she was tired, she would sit and rest for a few minutes, and then get back on her feet to dance until dawn. Dancing all night long used to be common in many Bon Odori, but has been banned for the past few decades due to security concerns voiced by village and town councils.

During these years I met one of the pioneering scholars of ethnology, Dr. Yasuji Honda, who was collecting data and conducting interviews of his own. It was an honor for me to meet him: he was so kind as to give me some professional direction, along with his thoughts on festival culture and suggestions of some festivals that I should observe. He must have been in his 80s, but he was still on his own two feet doing fieldwork. Witnessing this, my bow to him was very deep, with respect to his lifelong work.

My research to discover and observe beautiful traditions was full of adventures. Not only did I not have the luxury to stay at decent inns; I was not as organized as I should have been. In Nekko, there was only one bus a day, which I missed on the day of my departure. I ended up asking to stay the night at the village chief’s home at the last minute! He was very kind, and let the intruder stay. Another time, I was visiting the oldest Nembutsu Odori, or Buddhist Chanting Dance, in Nagano Prefecture. Again, at the last minute, I had to ask for permission to stay at the temple where the performance took place, for I did not realize the festivity would go on that late into the night! Another incident occurred at the Shamenchi Odori in Yase, Kyoto. That night, I had to climb over the closed gate of the youth hostel where I was staying, as I had been shooting photos and enjoying the dancing until after the gate time passed, and I was locked out.

I have already written about my friend Jun Maruyama, the documentary specialist of folk performances and festivals, but I will reintroduce him and his work, since he is also a figure in my research escapades. The first time I met him was at the Nishimonai Bon Odori. After that, whenever I returned Japan to travel to and observe folk performances, he would be there. I found him at such places as Nachi no Himatsuri, the Fire Festival in Nachi, and Hana Matsuri (called also Yuki Matsuri in some areas). At the Hana Matsuri in Nagano Prefecture, we were attending an overnight ceremony. The night was freezing, below zero Celsius, but the village men were supposed to take off their clothes and go into the river for an exorcising ritual at midnight. There were quite a few photographers there, and one of them joked that I, the only woman there, should follow them and watch them diving into the water. Right, I thought, I would have loved to photograph them – if not for the horrible cold! Maybe, if I had a third winter jacket to put over the two I was already wearing, I might have gone. Another time, after visiting Sadoga Shima (Sado Island) to see the On’ndeko festival, I found myself (again!) without a place to stay overnight. I ended up in staying in Jun’s room at an inn with a futon over my head, trying to keep warm and get a few hours of sleep. Another time, after witnessing Oni Kenbai in Iwate Prefecture, he was kind enough to offer me a ride to Tokyo. It was an overnight drive from Iwate, and I tried to help him stay awake by talking loudly, and even slapped his cheek! It was such a relief to arrive in Tokyo at dawn. The miso soup we had for breakfast at the restaurant right off the highway never tasted so good as then – even now.

Nishimonai Bon Odori, Kakunodate, Akita. Photo: Jun Maruyama

Okinawan Research

Okinawa is located at the southwestern tip of Japan, just east of Taiwan. Its unique geographical location placed Okinawa as a crossroads of various cultures of Southeast Asia, and contributed to its creating very special dance forms.

I first saw Okinawan dance at a concert presented by the Kawada Isako Okinawan Dance Troup in Tokyo in 1972. I was immediately struck by the beauty and grace of the women’s dance, On'na Odori. The subtle movements of the dance style seemed to be similar to those of the Noh Theater. Intrigued, I would come to find both similarities and differences between Okinawan dance and theater forms and those of mainland Japan. Despite the similarities between the two styles, Okinawan dance is indigenous and reflects its peoples’ history, life, and traditions, making their dance forms uniquely Okinawan.

I realized that looking only into fragments of cultural background would not be enough to accomplish my goals, and I decided to learn Okinawan culture and dance.

In 1976, I visited Okinawa Honto, Okinawa’s main island, for the first time in my life. I was eager to study Okinawan court dance in Naha, the prefecture’s capital city. Fortunately, Mr. Tokio Yamanouchi, a photographer who was a colleague of my mother’s, kindly wrote letters of introduction to three celebrated Okinawan dance teachers on my behalf. The big manila envelopes contained a stage photograph of each artist which he had taken. These artists were Minoru Miyagi, Setsuko Tamagusuku, and Takako Sato. All of them were incredibly kind to give me a chance to observe lessons at their studios, and even offer trial lessons for me to take.

The first studio I visited was Mr. Miyagi’s. His troupe would be the first to introduce Okinawan court dance and drama to the United States for the first time in 1981. The address in Naha was confusing, but I was lucky and came across a neighbor who said, “Oh, that dance studio? Yeah, right there! They dance and do summersaults till wee hours – sometimes until two or three in the morning!” The dance I tried there was a male dance, Zei, taught by renowned teacher Ms. Hiroko Kaja.

Ms. Tamagusuku was a very beautiful lady. When I visited her studio, she was practicing the dance Shudun with her students. As she danced, she started to cry, overcome by her emotional expression of Shudun’s heroine. Then she snapped out of it and said, “No, I shouldn’t be crying! I should make my audience cry.” I wanted to study with her, but she had more than a hundred students, so it seemed there was no space for me to join her studio.

In the end, I chose Ms. Sato as my teacher. She was the most eager to teach me, an outsider so to speak, and became my teacher through the 2010s. Her desire to perform outside of Okinawa was so strong that I asked the performing arts director of Asia Society to invite her to the United States. In 1986, with sponsorship from Asia Society and the Okinawan Association of NY, her troupe Ryubu Hana no Kai gave their first performance in New York. I had the honor of taking part in the concert. Twenty years later, I invited her troupe to the 50th Anniversary Concert of my performance debut held at Pace University in 2006. I cannot express my gratitude enough to Ms. Sato and her troupe for coming to show support for my work.

Studying at her studio was an interesting experience. Although class started at 7pm, students would trickle in between then and 8pm. As a student from Tokyo, I had been ready and waiting for their arrival at 6:30pm, dressed in yukata – already wet with sweat after only a few minutes in warm Okinawa. It was then that I learned about “Okinawan Time,” which flowed at a more relaxed rate than the rest of the world! Every time a student arrived at the studio to join the class, we would all stop practicing and bow our greetings to each other before resuming the lesson. Around 9:30 or 10pm our teacher would come down from upstairs, give directions and corrections, after which most students would leave. At such a late time, the night became animated and alive, for then her rehearsal with senior students would start. We would finish the lesson at midnight, and then talk.

There were times when she was sick and I spent my entire stay taking care of her. Other times, all I did was accompany her to rehearsals, holding her pocketbook wherever she went. Sometimes, I would wind up standing behind dancers during rehearsals. This was actually lucky for me, as I was able to learn new dances in this way. It also exposed me to amazing students. There was one in particular who was exceptionally talented. She learned a whole dance piece without any instructions on the steps and passed a special certification contest. How did she do it? She had been assigned to be an assistant that year, and as she sat and turned the CD music on and off during rehearsals, she absorbed the choreography by watching alone. Another student came just to clean the studio in order to prepare for a rehearsal with musicians, and still another came to clean up the teacher’s costumes the day after a big concert. The respect paid to her by her students was almost beyond imagination. The mentor-disciple relationships that I witnessed in Okinawa still hold true. Perhaps it may have been so a hundred years ago in mainland Japan as well.

I owe all these teachers so much for inspiring me to incorporate Okinawan dance techniques into my choreography. Ms. Sato even bestowed upon me special permission to perform and teach Okinawan dance. However, I was never able to reach the point of authenticity.

Documentary

My growing fascination with Okinawan dance, to which I was introduced on my quest to find the roots of Japanese dance and other performing art traditions, led me to my Ph.D. My dissertation on the origins of Okinawan dance was completed in 1986. It goes without saying, my dissertation could not have been written without the support of many people.

When I began writing my dissertation, I felt as if I was living in the NYU library – spending hours, day and night, working on my draft. Like many of the other students I noticed, the vending machine of snacks and drinks in the basement seemed to be our best friends! The exhausting hours of work and poor nutrition paid off, though, and my project slowly took shape.

As the arguments for my theory developed, my dissertation needed to include field research in order to support them. For that purpose, I turned to EARTHWATCH, an NPO organization, which recruited staff for documentation. Among those who joined my team were amateurs who had interest in Okinawan culture: videographers, photographers including Katei, who was a regular contributor to National Geographic, and a Laban-certified Dance Notator. From September to October 1985, my crew and I visited five islands in Okinawa: Honto, Ie-jima, Taketomi-jima, Iriomete-jima, Ikema-jima. In Naha City, the dancers at Ms. Sato’s studio were very supportive and willing to be recorded and photographed to help document the court dances. At the Prefectural Museum, we had a special treat. The staff rolled out scrolls depicting Ryukyuan Bugaku-zu dancers from the 18th century for us to photograph. We watched wide-eyed as they handled the precious documents with their white gloves. This record was an especially important one for my dissertation research, as it shows the visit of Okinawan court musicians and dancers to the Shogunate and Shimazu residence in Edo (Tokyo).

Dance Ryukyu Team with Okinawan Supporters (sponsored by EARTHWATCH)

Those who supported and helped us in the villages we visited were invaluable. Without their willingness to allow us to photograph and record the religious ceremonies, some of which are secretive and off-limits to outsiders or even to villagers other than priestesses, it would not have been possible to accomplish our mission. In Ikema-jima, as instructed by the village officials, we camouflaged ourselves and our cameras with leaves and branches so that the Shinjo, or priestesses, would not see us. They were not supposed to be seen during the festival ceremonies; witnessing the priestesses dancing is prohibited, since it might bring about a bad omen.

Priestesses at Uhkui (Yukui)Ceremony, Ikema-jima, Okinawa. Photo: Katie Thompson

Shinugu Matsuri, Gushiken, Motobu, Okinawa. Photo: Ryukyu Shimpo Newspaper, September 15, 1985

Mr. Matsukawa and Salon Series

Throughout my memoir, I have cited many people to whom I owe my career. Speaking now of Okinawa, I cannot neglect to mention Mr. Shigeichi Matsukawa. The greatest supporter of my Okinawan dance, he was the one of founding members of American Okinawa Association of New York, chair and later the board of trustees. Not only did he endorse me to members of the AOA to introduce Okinawan dance to American audiences, in spite of the fact that my dancing would never meet the standard of pristine Okinawa court dance, but he was personally happy for me when I obtained my Ph.D. with my dissertation titled The Origins of Okinawan Dance. To congratulate me, he came over to my studio with gifts: a big, beautiful vase and a copy of the entire Encyclopedia of Okinawa published by Okinawan Times Publications! His praise was too kind, but encouraged by his support and my passion for Okinawa, I presented several programs on Okinawan dance and theater at my Salon Series. The Salon Series, held three times a year for 25 years, was a collaborative program designed to introduce Japanese performing arts to audiences in New York. I gave programs in Okinawan themes from 1980 to 2000 such as “Okinawan Karate and Male Dance,” “The Joy of Okinawan Music,” “The Classical Dances and the Contemporary Dances of Okinawa,” and “Tamagusuku Chokun and His Kumi Odori (Court Opera) as National Identity.”

The last one was a particularly fun way to explore interactions between Okinawa, China, and Japan in the early 18th century. It was Tamagusuku Chokun, the dance master, who first presented Okinawan Court dance and drama to Chinese emissaries in 1719. There is a record of his visiting Edo and witnessing Kabuki, specifically Ichikawa Danjuro’s performance. It is suspected that he incorporated Danjuro’s Mie, the Kabuki technique, in his drama Nido Tekiuchi. His work proved the importance of performing arts as a source of cultural importance, as he proudly showed the unique arts of people of the Ryukyu Islands. Without the support of Mr. Matsukawa and the American Okinawa Association, I could not have introduced Okinawan dances to New York audiences.

Dilemma of a Classical Dancer

In the 1960s, during my college days, there was a movement to spotlight Minzoku Geinoh. The government formed the troupe, called “Nihon Minzoku Buyo-dan” (Japanese Folk Performance Dance Troup), and called upon classically trained dancers to join. As I watched their performances, I felt that something was missing. It was only many years later that I realized that dance is not composed of only movements, steps, and gestures, but something more.

I was driven to research, photograph, and interview people who were making efforts to keep traditional arts alive; I had the desire to absorb the essence of the treasures they had kept, and I learned the beautiful dances such as Nishimonai, Owara-bushi, and Shiraishi Odori. Then, when I was back in New York, I introduced these dances to my audiences. But I began to doubt these performances by myself and my company. I am from Tokyo and have been trained as a classical dancer. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that it was impossible to capture the true essence of these dances, the beauty, the genuine spirit. I was not of these places. I did not bathe in their water, nor eat their traditional foods, nor take part in the ways of life that these villages had passed down for hundreds of years. I would always be an outsider looking in, one whose roots lay hundreds of miles away. Even though we dancers can give a nice stage presentation, it was obvious that steps and movements are not only what make up a dance. The blood, the bone, air, spirit, soul – these are the things that give the dance itself life. My dilemma, as a Nihon Buyo dancer trained in classical techniques and style, was that I had to decide if enthusiasm and desire was enough to be performing a dance that I felt didn’t belong to me.

For a time, I put aside questions of authenticity, and propelled by my love and passion for the beauty of heritage and traditions of Minzoku Geianoh, I choreographed works inspired by the dances I had observed. One of them was Natsu no Gyoretsu (Summer Procession), which premiered at the Riverside Theater in 1982 with music by Yukio Tsuji. The dance was inspired by the Otaue-shinji, or rice planting ceremony, of Aso Shrine in Kumamoto Prefecture in Kyushu.

Ayako-mai and Salon Series

Another outcome of my research in Minzoku Geinoh that became an important inspiration for the creation of several dances was Ayako-mai, the itinerant performers' dance of the pre-Kabuki period. Decades later, it led to an unusual presentation during Salon Series No. 58.

The program was titled “Itinerant Performers in Japan and Russia and Impact of Anna Pavlova.” Russian Gypsy female soloists paved the way for ballerina Anna Pavlova's acceptance and success. And although it is not as well known, Pavlova influenced the New Dance Movement in 1920s in Japan. My guest, Julia Kulakova, performed a Russian Gypsy dance while my dancers from my company presented Oharagi Odori, from the Ayako-mai repertory.

Although the program focused on the unarguable contribution of female itinerant performers in Japanese performing arts history, it confirmed the importance of honoring the roots of Japanese dance. Okuni, the founder of Kabuki, was one of those female itinerant performers. Lacking permanent theaters, performers used to tour as itinerants from village to village until a stable theater system was established in the mid 1600s. Following Okuni’s sensational success in 1603, women’s kabuki troupes, called On’na Kabuki (Women’s Kabuki) flourished and travelled around the country. Ayako-mai is the name of the repertory that has been handed down through centuries in two villages in the valley of On’na-dani, in Nigata Prefecture. The two villages share almost the same repertory, but with differences in styles, movements, and lyrics. I heard a lot of talk from each village claiming, “Our way is the correct way!” when I visited to learn the dances in 1975. During the rehearsal, the night before the performance, the choreographer for Takaharada village, came up to me and said, “We are short of hands. Why don’t you help tomorrow… something like make up?” “Oh? Me? Yes, sure!” I uttered with delight.

The style of Ayako-mai is much freer, less introverted, and with less confined movement compared to Kabuki dances, whose techniques were developed by men’s observation of women and their femininity. I incorporated these more uninhibited styles and techniques into my choreography in such dances as Haru no umi and Uruma.

Looking back now, it is interesting to see how one’s experiences in the past emerge in their present self. It goes without saying that all of our experience nourishes us and becomes a part of us and who we are.

During the 1970s, my quest to find the roots of my dance tradition in the Minzoku Geinoh and Okinawan dance showed me an immeasurable inheritance. Despite the difficulty of, or the failure to, capture its genuine beauty and artistry, I believe that finding one’s own roots are a crucial task. One’s roots are an essential resource for inspiration in the creation of new work for an artist, in both modern and traditional disciplines. Although I understand it could be seen as disrespectful and even as offensive to our traditions, we cannot be afraid to make mistakes and face criticism in our trials and endeavors. Perhaps an artist may be allowed to be a “selfish dreamer” – someone who keeps chasing one’s beliefs, aspirations, and dreams.

“Whoever I am now, and whoever my friend is, 50 years later, we are part of this feast of the past.”

— Mary Oliver, Blue Iris

The posting of this chapter to JapanCulture-NYC.com was paid for by Sachiyo Ito and reprinted here with her permission. Susan Miyagi McCormac of JapanCultureNYC, LLC edited this chapter for grammatical purposes only and did not write or fact-check any information. For more information about Sachiyo Ito and Company, please visit dancejapan.com. ©Sachiyo Ito. All rights reserved.

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SACHIYO ITO’S MEMOIR: CHAPTER 8