Copyright Infringement Warning

I went to an art festival last weekend, featuring the work of Hirose Kinzo (1812-1876?) [my "?" not the world's... I'll look it up, but I might not get back to fixing it, just fyi] aka "Ekin" who was a painter for the Tokyo court during the Edo period (1603 to the mid -1800s). He was sponsored by wealthy patrons who dictated what he should compose, mostly pretty pictures to go on screens for royal houses, I hear. At some point he was accused of counterfeiting paintings and forced into exile in Kochi. Yes, that's what kind of prefecture Kochi is: a good place to exile your frenemies. Just ask the little love-lorn monk who pined away at Harimayabashi.

Anyhoo, Ekin ended up in his aunt's cellar painting posters for the professional kabuki (totally unintelligible, yet interesting Japanese ballad opera) groups who came down from Kagawa prefecture to play in Kochi. These posters generally depicted some aspect of the plot or characters involved in the play. 

I know. Doesn't this make you just die to see this thing?

My Japanese teacher invited me to the festival and it's summer time, so I went. We saw several of the original posters hiding in temperature-controlled rooms, many reproductions of the original posters (most of which, by the by, are about 6 feet tall - very life-like and impressive), and saw a little video about the paint that Ekin used in his drawings. The color is phenomenal, almost all mineral (I think), coming from rocks washed up out of the ocean. I wasn't entirely clear about this part of the video. Or any part of the video, if it comes to that, but this was a portion that kept showing pictures of the waves and pictures of rocks with little multi-colored veins of mineral deposits. (Do rocks have veins like we do? Or do they have vanes like the wind plays with on top of your house? I dunno.)

The festival was an interesting affair of lit-up streets and good food. I personally ate "Ichi-go, Ichi-e" (once in a lifetime chance) kaki-gori (shaved ice with strawberry syrup and sweetened- condensed milk, which is what I LIVE for in the summer), some yaki soba (grilled noodles with onions and spices), and some sort of fatty pork on a stick. Damn, that's good. No pictures, though. My camera doesn't work well in the dark. 

They also put out some posters and paintings by modern-day artists, mixed in with Ekin's original works, and lit them up by candlelight on the street. It would have been beautiful and romantic except it was awful and disturbing. If you don't like frightening images, skip down to the Kabuki section. 

This one's okay, but I still don't understand it.

I know, I know. I don't appreciate art. And I don't own the copyright to these images. If you see them and like them, please buy them. I want the artists to get paid so they stop having nightmares and stop drawing scary stuff. 

After a bit, I just stopped looking. I understand the need to express yourself, but I don't have to buy it. 

Kabuki! 

Kabuki is completely incomprehensible,　unless you know the story pretty intimately. It's rather like going to the opera and thinking, "Nessun Dorma, what a pretty song! He must be singing about how much he loves the princess!" No. He's not. Just like Lucia is not singing about how excited she is to get married. And the Queen of the Night is not telling a high-pitched joke. That shit's serious. 

Kabuki is pretty similar. One of the gentleman who knew the play explained the story a little bit and also the characters' family lines (?). It looked like this:

That's a lot of people connected to the story. There were only five speaking
parts in the whole play, anyway. I don't know who all the extra names are
and neither did my Japanese friends!

The play itself was pretty cool. I didn't get what was going on, but apparently that's not necessary to enjoy it. What IS necessary is a comfortable seat. There are few tortures more refined than sitting in seiza (proper Japanese sitting-on-knees style) on hardwood floors, with a paper-thin pillow under your butt, laughing at your pain for an hour and a half. For the third act, some nice old lady got up and gave us her chair because she was leaving. She had had enough, I guess.

What I did understand of the story was that a fox had changed himself/herself into a lady and had a child with her/his husband. This is a common theme in Japanese literature and art and foxes are well-known for this magical ability. Every so often, the wife in the play would clasp her fingers into a little fist that resembles a fox-paw. Okay, I could get into that. 

Here we see the fox-lady writing calligraphy on the walls of her home.
I believe she is writing a confession about being a fox and the sadness
that comes with living a human life. Or maybe not. My Japanese teacher
read it, but I didn't understand.

So the immediately-above picture is pretty cool BECAUSE! The first two panels on the right (next to the man and the child) were written with the lady's right hand. The third panel over was written with her left hand, as the child pesters her and holds onto her right hand, and it's mirror-image writing. The kanji characters are exactly the opposite order they should be. That's very hard and very cool. The best part is the last panel. For this panel, the child is gathered up in her arms and she has no free hands to draw, so she draws the last characters with the stick in her mouth. All in front of the audience. Quite a trick, and very difficult. 

The festival was fun and I apologize to anybody who appears in the pictures and didn't want to be. Let me know. (since my mom and a few friends are the only people who read this, it is highly unlikely they will show up in the pictures! but just in case.) Summer matsuri in Japan is the only reason people don't pick up and move somewhere cooler. 

Happy summer.