Various Dumb Plays

Shodon Shibaya: The Paper-Masked Theater of Kakeromajima

Every lunar ninth day of the ninth month, a procession of men in tall paper hats and homemade paper masks files into the small forecourt of Oochon Shrine on Kakeromajima, a sparsely populated island off the southern coast of Amami Oshima. The men have just waded into the sea at Shodon Nagahama beach, flicked saltwater three times toward the open water, and wiped their faces dry. They are called the shibaya ninjō, the performers of Shodon Shibaya, and over the next several hours they will dance, mime, and operate puppets through eleven set pieces drawn from mainland Japanese kyogen, Ryukyuan court arts, and what local tradition holds to be much older Chinese sources.

The performance is one of Japan's most distinctive surviving outdoor village theaters, designated a Nationally Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property on 4 May 1976. It is held outdoors on packed earth, with no curtain, no proscenium, and no admission. The audience sits on the ground or stands among the trees ringing the shrine compound.

An island theater built from many sources

Shodon village occupies a deep bay on the south side of Kakeromajima, in Setouchi Town, Kagoshima Prefecture. For several centuries the bay served as a stopover on the maritime route between Kyushu, the Ryukyu Kingdom, and ports further south, and the village absorbed cultural traffic from all of those directions. Shodon Shibaya is the most visible legacy of that mixing.

Researchers who have catalogued the eleven current pieces find elements from at least three streams. The opening Sanbato closely resembles the sanbasō ritual dance derived from Noh's Okina, suggesting transmission from the mainland. The bō-odori stick dances Sukutengwa and Kukuwa-bushi, performed by paired dancers with tasseled batons, share posture and tempo with Ryukyuan village arts. The Tamatiyu puppet piece, in which a small wooden figure repeatedly hides behind a folding screen as a snake appears, has no close mainland parallel and may preserve an older form. Older village elders simply called the whole performance Nagusan, an Amami word for restful entertainment.

The Cultural Affairs designation report describes the form as a kind of village kyogen that absorbed early-modern popular song-dances and reorganized them into a local idiom. The dance, mime, and puppetry mix, and several costume conventions, are said to recall pre-Edo kabuki.

The eleven pieces

The Shodon Shibaya Preservation Society now maintains eleven pieces, reduced from a repertoire that once reportedly numbered around twenty. The day's order, after the seaside purification and procession into the shrine, runs roughly as follows.

Sanbato opens the performance. An okina figure in a tall silk hat and crested formal jacket steps from the makeshift dressing room behind the shrine, accompanied by a narikomochi who scampers comically alongside. The okina recites a formal greeting and announces the pieces to follow.

Kukuwa-bushi follows. Eight dancers with tasseled batons perform an elegant slow dance said to lament the death in battle of the young Heike warrior Taira no Atsumori, killed at the Battle of Ichi-no-tani in 1184.

Shinjō-bushi is a solo hand dance with a long spoken introduction that names Tanegashima Island as the dance's source.

Kinkō-bushi places eight dancers in a circle for another slow hand dance. The name Kinkō is said to refer to Yoshida Kenkō, the medieval essayist who wrote Tsurezuregusa.

Sukutengwa is a paired stick dance performed by two men at a time, said by local tradition to derive from a Chinese celebration of the founding of the Song dynasty.

Shishikiri is a comic skit. A young woman dances alone in a field, a beast figure in a fur costume rushes in to seize her, and a hunter arrives to drive the beast off.

Dattodon is a one-man piece in which a blind biwa player realizes his lute has been switched, hears his real instrument being played across a river, and tries to wade across in pursuit. The whole sequence is mimed.

Kama-odori is a sickle dance in which performers hold a small wooden sickle in each hand, giving thanks for the past year's rice harvest and praying for the next.

Tamatiyu is the puppet piece. A small carved figure hides three times behind a low folding screen as a serpent figure appears and withdraws.

Takaki-yama closes the day. Dancers raise a large drum overhead and beat it in an animated rhythm. The piece is read as a closing prayer for harvest.

The Heike legend and the village's name

Local tradition links the entire tradition to Taira no Sukemori, a grandson of the Heike chief Kiyomori. The Heike were destroyed at the Battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185, and one strand of the family's surviving folklore places Sukemori on Kakeromajima as a refugee. The name Shodon (諸鈍) is said in the local account to derive from his reassurance to his retainers: here our pursuers will not follow; let all of you (sho) be at ease (don). Whether or not the etymology is historical, Sukemori is enshrined at Oochon Shrine alongside Emperor Ōjin and Empress Jingū, and a stone marker built in 1828 (Bunsei 11), said to be his grave, still stands inside the precinct.

The villagers say the shibaya began when Sukemori taught the performance to the local people as a courtesy after his arrival. Eight hundred years is the figure cited locally for the tradition's age. Earlier records that would confirm the date have not survived, and most folklorists treat the legend as a folk explanation for a tradition that probably reached its present form during the Edo period.

What to know before going

Shodon Shibaya is performed once a year, on the lunar ninth day of the ninth month, which falls in mid- to late October on the modern calendar. The performance takes place in the open compound of Oochon Shrine, beginning in the early afternoon after the sea purification at Shodon Nagahama. There is no admission charge. The shrine compound is small, and the closer positions fill quickly with residents and returning villagers, so arriving an hour or two early is sensible.

Reaching the site takes effort. Kakeromajima has no airport and is reached by ferry from Koniya Port on Amami Oshima, run by Setouchi Town. The crossing to Seso Port or Ikenma Port takes about 20 to 25 minutes. From Seso, the Kakeroma Bus connects to Shodon village in roughly an hour, though service is limited. Many visitors arrange a hired car or stay overnight in a village minshuku, of which Shodon has several. The deigo trees (Indian coral bean) lining the village waterfront are themselves listed as a Kagoshima cultural property and are said to have been planted as navigation marks during the period of active Ryukyuan trade.

Photography is permitted, though flash is discouraged during the puppet piece. Local etiquette asks visitors to stay outside the performance area and to avoid moving across the front of the dancers' sight lines.