World+Theatre+style+review+David+Aziz+(take+home+exam)

David Aziz Farley Richmond Intro to Theatre 3-31-2017 Japanese Kagura The kagura theatre form caught my attention right away due to its very interesting looking masks used for the demon characters. In the textbook, it also mentioned many names, such as Amaterasu. I have heard of this word before in a japanese show I have watched before and it immediately sparked my interest to learn where the actual word comes from. The Amaterasu I have known before this was the name of a pure black flame that never can be extinguished. Amaterasu in this theatre form, is a person who runs away into a cave and takes all of the light in the world with him. The correlation between the two is very interesting to me since both are the absence of light with the blackness. Kagura is a ritual play that is typically performed by priests in Japan. The literal translation of Kagura is “entertaining the gods”. The story is about how Amaterasu was very scared and ran away to go hide in a cave and had taken all the light with her. The gods had seen that she had taken all of the light and brought the world to darkness, and decided to come up with a way to get her out of the cave. They used Ameno Uzume, the goddess of performing arts, to dance while also revealing her breasts and genitals. The gods all watched and laughed at her so much that Amaterasu became curious and decided to see what was going on outside the cave. The god Ameno Tajikarao, was waiting outside the cave ready. As soon as Amaterasu stepped out, he grabbed her and pulled her out. Another god stretched a holy rope across the front of the cave and told her she couldn't go back in. These familiar words, such as Amaterasu and Susano, also found in the play sparked an interest for me to actually look up what they were in Japanese mythology. It is very interesting how most Japanese television shows all include some sort of ancient Japanese mythology that is very accurate.