Deer Dance Iwate Honolulu Festival 2006

The Deer Dance Iwate prefecture dancers at Honolulu Festival 2006 in Hawai'i

Shishi Odori originated in the exorcism at the Kasuga Taisha Shrine in Nara. Iwate dancers wears a shishiga-shira play drums and twist and swoosh the sasara bamboo tied to their backs. The dance shows that deer, which destroy fields, obey people. Especially, the action of stepping firmly on the ground means to pray to the god of the earth.

Preserving the Ochiai Deer Dance: Tradition, Modernity, and Globalization in Rural Japan

Christopher S. Thompson, Ohio University

In many Japanese rural hamlets, age-old folk performance traditions are dying, or at least changing. In Ochiai, a small rice-farming hamlet in south-central Iwate Prefecture, there are no longer enough residents to perform Shishi Odori, the Deer Dance that has served as a signature of this small rice-farming collective for over three-hundred years. But instead of succumbing to the demise of their heritage, Ochiai residents are adapting Shishi Odori and its related practices to the changes wrought by modernity and globalization in northeastern Japan.

In this paper, I examine the meaning and significance of the Deer Dance in contemporary Ochiai from the viewpoint of its performers and hamlet residents. In so doing, I show how this local tradition is organized and performed in a way that reflects a new hamlet identity that is a product of the present, not the past. Interestingly, this analysis contrasts sharply with the view of municipal bureaucrats who believe their funding of Ochiai's efforts to sustain Shishi Odori helps to "preserve the past" and of domestic and international tourists who attend performances to experience an "authentic" taste of Iwate's rural folk history. Based on annual fieldwork since 1994, I argue that various local level social and economic circumstances have forced Ochiai residents to make significant compromises in the personnel, costuming, choreography, and management of their local tradition, which render present-day Shishi Odori a performance that is thoroughly modern.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Honolulu
• Festival
• 2006
• Hawaii
• Hawai'i
• Oahu
• Japanese
• Cultural
• Preservation
• robot
• sex
• 11
• naruto
• world
• show
• girl

[ickyXpoo]

what the hell i was looking for system of a down

[ptosis]

???

[nylonapple9858]

yeah i was looking for soad and i shit myself

[KawaiiRini]

;>.> the tags are wierd

but the dance was cool even though it was short, please record a longer version of this next time if you could!?

[ickyXpoo]

its a song by system of a down called deer dance,

[Inujin]

I'm scared

[novastarlet]

Wow! I am really excited to come across this footage. I purchased a Hello Kitty in Iwate where she is dressed as if doing the deer dance, however I never got to see the dance in action.

Thanks!

<img src="http://www.christine-fost­er.com/images/omiyage/Iwate.jp­g">