After a week of more or less hurried mornings, it was nice to sleep in and then knock around my room, doing some cleaning and enjoying my breakfast sandwich.
Daisōshō, the retired (though still very active) 15th generation Grand Master of the Urasenke line, had given all the students tickets to the annual Miyako Odori dance presentation (this year’s was the 136th), so in the afternoon, Midorikai got dressed up once again and hailed taxis to take us to Gion, Kyoto’s old geiko (the local term for geisha) district. Automobiles and pedestrians vied for passage through the narrow streets of two-story wooden buildings, made considerably less charming by the addition of temporary signposts in garish oranges and grays advertising the odori.
Our tickets admitted us to the Gionkobu Kaburenjo theater complex, a handsome old cluster of buildings through which attendants herd four performances’ worth of visitors a day every day in April. We tramped across the blue-carpeted floors and down halls bright with circus-like red and white-striped wall hangings. A hundred or so at a time, deluxe ticket holders like us were funneled up a flight of stairs into a large room full of low, long tables and stools. At the front of the room, a geiko in full makeup and kimono was preparing tea in a style called ryūrei, developed in the late 19th century for the benefit of foreigners who couldn’t or wouldn’t sit on the floor in traditional seiza style. In ryūrei, host and guests alike sit like Westerners; it’s a lot more comfortable, of course, but it looked silly to me, and somehow more self-consciously mannered than the older styles. It didn’t help that the huge crowd kept cameras firing throughout; that a mobile phone some rows over rang halfway through with the title music from Austin Powers; that an efficient fleet of assistants distributed sweets and tea perfunctorily without any of the expected formalities of phrase and gesture; that as soon as our empty tea bowls were taken away, wranglers instructed us loudly to leave as quickly as possible to make room for the next lot of guests; that a few sips of my tea revealed an unwhisked lump clinging malignantly to the bottom of the bowl. On the other hand, we got to keep the rather pretty little plates our sweets were served on.
Next we got a brief glimpse of the lovely garden in the complex’s open central courtyard before we reached the waiting lobby for the show itself, where a good dozen vendors sold souvenirs, tea, sweets, books, elegant stationery, gaudy fabrics, and any number of things stamped with the likeness of unofficial national deity Hello Kitty.
The theater itself was large and richly appointed with comfortable seats in dark red velvet on the main floor and balcony, and tatami mats in the galleries for holders of less expensive tickets. The hour-long performance featured a dozen or so live musicians on either side of the front of the hall–shamisen to stage left, drums and shrill flutes (I can’t be expected to know the Japanese name of absolutely everything, can I?) to the right–maintaining a near-constant backdrop of the traditional-sounding noise that I don’t expect to ever acquire an appreciation of. (It wasn’t always obvious to my ears, to begin with, that both sides of the orchestra were in fact attempting to execute the same piece of music.) One, and sometimes all, of the shamisen players sang a text that doubtless shed great light for Japanese speakers on what was happening onstage; the percussionists would periodically do some call-and-response rhythmic shouting.
I don’t get Japanese dance any more than I get Japanese music. I appreciate the elegant movement and precise body control, but after five or so minutes of it, I feel like the point has been made. A working knowledge of Japanese and consequent ability to follow what plot was being suggested onstage (the program said it had been adapted from The Tale of Genji, the world’s oldest surviving novel and a product of proud Japan, which is celebrating the thousandth anniversary of the book’s publication this year) would probably have helped. As it was, I had to settle for enjoying the dazzling kimono and clever scene changes; happily, there was quite a lot there to enjoy. Also from time to time I would amuse myself by trying to imagine what various of the dancers looked like with her hair down and makeup off.
Szymon, Verena and I saved money and got exercise by walking back to the dorms. It took us about an hour at a brisk pace that I really shouldn’t have attempted in dress shoes; we followed the Kamo river most of the way uptown. The early evening had brought grey skies and a biting wind, but young couples, amateur photographers, and one inexplicable trombonist crowded the river’s steep brick banks, while a few late hanami parties soldiered on beneath much-thinned sakura.
Sean and I took a bus down Horikawa to a long shopping arcade called Sanjō that had been recommended to us, only to find that almost all its merchants had closed up before 7 on a Saturday night. We bought takoyaki for supper from one of the few open businesses and hit up a 100-yen shop for snacks and the sorts of housewares that we’re still discovering we need after a week and a half in our new home. And then we drank beer and listened to the Beach Boys in Sean’s room until bedtime.