Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

62 INTERMINGLING OF CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITYWatching noh theater makes us appreciate that noteverything is as it seems. It is a meditation on theinvisible and unseen. In fast-moving, consumeristJapan, such meditations are regarded as providing animportant balance, a time-out from the world rushingpast outside the theater. In noh, the actor is oftenmasked, heavily dressed, his/her movements minimal.Often the actor is completely still: what Zeami callssenu hima—a void/rapture of time and space in whichthe actor stands doing nothing but shows his/her way ofbeing, completely inhibited. The audience must workto see past the surface to the hidden worlds of loss,suffering and longings of the heart.What then are we observing? It is that one thing that wealways desire to see but cannot see: the movement of thehuman soul. Noh can provoke in its viewers powerfulemotions of empathy beyond what we see on stage.This power that noh has is something contemporaryJapanese artists are still profoundly aware of and itinvigorates the works of contemporary artists as diverseas anime director Miyazaki to theater director OkamotoAkira.Spirited AwaySurprisingly for a blockbuster, Miyazaki’s Spirited Awayoffers a bleak vision of Japan. The vulnerability of theJapanese identity is clear. The bubble has burst, leavingabandoned theme parks and mindless consumers.Pollution from materialism has created filthy rivers andpeople are pigs or foul smelling. The gods are offended.The bathhouse of the gods is the bulwark against uglymaterialism but even this faces a battle from pollutingforces within and without. Its only hope lies in its youngheroine, Chihiro.Miyazaki warns that “in this borderless age… a manwithout history or a people that forgot its past willhave no choice but to disappear in a shimmer of light”(Napier 2006). Chihiro is in danger of that.Her quest, therefore, is for cultural recovery/rehabilitation. She must rediscover and reincorporateelements of purity, endurance, self-sacrifice—valueshistorically regarded as traditionally Japanese—in orderto rescue her parents, now sadly turned into pigs.The young girl or shojo has another, deeper, culturalresonance in Japan 3 . Only she can turn her parentsback from pigs to humans. Only she can restore thelost boy, Haku, back to his true identity as a river god.Most significant is her encounter with the mysteriousStink God. In bathing him she discovers a thorn in hisside. She pulls the thorn, which turns out to be a bicyclehandlebar, which is in turn connected to other junk.She pulls, the pieces untangle and the Stink God isrevealed to be a River Spirit finally free of the pollutionof modern life. He wears the most sacred and ancientnoh mask—the old man or okina.The use of the noh mask in this popular film makes itclear that even ordinary Japanese who have never seena noh performance see noh as embodying somethingsacred and deeply spiritual: something worth rescuing,recollecting, re-encountering. Under the stink issomething sacred. That the river is sacred is quicklyunderstood as part of everyday Shinto doctrine whichsees the potential for sacredness in all things.Shojo, Miko, Shinto and the origins of Japanese theaterThe image of the girl as shaman is crucial in Japanesecultural tradition. In the Shinto religion, shrine maidens,miko, had an important function as mediators with thegods, restoring balance and harmony. Significantly, thestory of the origins of Japanese theater comes from astory of one such miko. Zeami, in narrating the sacredorigins of noh, recalls a mythical event.The sun deity Amaterasu, attacked by her brother, thestorm god Susano’o, goes into hiding and the world isplunged into darkness. The entreaties of the gods cannotmove her. The clever young goddess, Ama no Uzume,overturns a tub near her cave’s entrance and dancesjoyfully on it, eventually exposing her breasts and liftingher skirts in a bawdy display. The gods convulse withlaughter and, hearing this, the curious Amaterasu islured out. Thus, through performance, light returns tothe world. Balance is restored.Zeami’s story conveys the magic powers of dance andtheater: exorcism and trance as well as obscenity andlaughter must converge in order to avert evil and bringrenewal to the world.The idea of balance or ki is still central in Japan andan acceptance of the invisible in Japan is apparenteverywhere. Thus, while many Japanese may deny anyreligiosity, their sense of the spiritual nature of things iswidely accepted, as is obvious by the small shrines thatdot the landscape, the plethora of hedgehogs, raccoondogs and foxes and the porcelain cats that wave theirpaws at you from every sushi restaurant. In SpiritedAway, the Stink God’s true form is revealed because ofthe concern of the inhabitants of the bathhouse—or theconcern of ordinary folk.Asian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows