In our story of Chinese dancing it is worth while to mention the celebrated ‘Lantern Festival’ that is performed every New Year night. It is very likely that the Chinese had once long ago a lantern dance, which has degenerated now into a simple marching procession, in which the people participate in the same sense as the Italians do in their carnival. Confucius writes of it as of a festival in honor of the sun, the source of the light and life. This festival is celebrated three nights continually. Everything considered, we come to the conclusion that the art of dancing of the land of Mandarins has been of little influence and significance to our choreography. The reason for this lies partly in the racial morale, partly in a national psychology that breathes peace and externalism.
II
Of a quite different character are the dances of Japan, of which Marcella A. Hincks gives to us a comprehensive picture. According to her, dancing in Japan is an essential part of religion and national tradition. In one of the oldest Japanese legends we are told that the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, being angry, hid herself in a cave, so that the world was plunged in darkness and life on earth became intolerable. The eight million deities of the Japanese heaven, seeing the sorrow and destruction wrought by Amaterasu’s absence from the world, sought by every means possible to coax her from her retreat. But nothing could prevail on her to leave it, until one god, wiser than the others, devised a plan whereby the angered goddess might be lured from her hiding place. Among the immortals was the beautiful Ame-No-Azume, whom they sent to dance and sing at the mouth of the cave, and the goddess, attracted by the unusual sound of music and dancing, and unable to withstand her curiosity, emerged from the concealment, to gaze upon the dancer. So once more she gave the light of her smile to the world. The people never forgot that dancing had been the means of bringing back Amaterasu to Japan, therefore from time immemorial the dance has been honored as a religious ceremony and practiced as a fine art throughout the Land of the Rising Sun.
Dancing in Japan is not associated with pleasure and joyful feeling alone; every emotion, grave or gay, may become the subject of a dance. Some time ago funeral dances were performed around the corpse, which was placed in a building specially constructed for that purpose, and though it is said that originally the dancers hoped to recall the dead to life by the power and charm of their dance, later the measures were performed merely as a farewell ceremony.
The Japanese dance is of the greatest importance and interest historically. Like her civilization, and the greater number of her arts, Japan borrowed many of her dance ideas from China, though the genius of the people very soon developed many new forms of dance, quite distinct from the Chinese importation. From the earliest times dancing has been closely associated with religion: in both the Shinto and the Buddhist faiths we find it occupying foremost place in worship. The Buddhist priests of the thirteenth century made use of dancing as a refining influence, which helped to refine the uncultured military class by which Japan was more or less ruled during the early Middle Ages.
The Japanese dance, like that of the ancient Greeks, is predominantly of a pantomimic nature, and strives to represent in gesture a historic incident, some mythical legend, or a scene from folk-lore; its chief characteristic is always expressiveness, and it invariably possesses a strong emotional tendency. The Japanese have an extraordinary mimic gift which they have cultivated to such an extent that it is doubtful whether any other people has ever developed such a wide and expressive art of gesture. Dancing in the European sense the Japanese would call dengaku or acrobatic.
Like the tea ceremony, the Japanese dance is esoteric as well as exoteric, and to apprehend the meaning of every gesture is no easy task to the uninitiated. Thus to arch the hand over the eyes conveys that the dancer is weeping; to extend the arms while looking eagerly in the direction indicated by the hand suggests that the dancer is thinking of some one in a far-away country. The arms crossed at the chest mean meditation, etc. There is, for instance, a set of special gestures for the No dances, divided first of all into a certain number of fundamental gestures and poses, and then into numerous variations of these, and figures devised from them, much as the technique of the European ballet dancing consists of ‘fundamental positions’ and endless less important ‘positions.’
The conventional gestures, sleeve-waving and fan-waving movements, constitute the greatest difficulty in the way of an intelligent interpretation of the Japanese dance. The technique is also elaborate and the vocabulary of the dancing terms large, but the positions and the attitudes of the limbs are radically different from those of the European dance, the feet being little seen, and their action considered subordinate, though the stamping of the feet is important in some cases. The ease of movement, the smoothness and the legato effect of a Japanese dance can only be obtained by the most rigorous physical training. The Japanese strive to master the technique so thoroughly that every movement of the body is produced with perfect ease and spontaneity; their ideal is art hidden by its own perfection.
The dances of Japan may be grouped under three broad divisions of equal importance: Religious, classical, and popular. The last vestiges of a religious dance of great antiquity may still be seen at the half-yearly ceremonials of Confucius, when eight pairs of dancers in gorgeous robes, each holding a triple pheasant’s feather in one hand and a six-holed flute in the other, posture and dance as an accompaniment to the Confucian hymn. It is said that the Bugaku dance was introduced 2000 years ago.
The Japanese history of dancing begins from the eighth to twelfth centuries. The Bugaku and the Kagura, another ancient Japanese sacred dance, are considered the bases of all the other dances. The movements in both dances strive to express reverence, adoration and humility. The music of the old Japanese dances is solemn, weird and always in a minor key, and the instruments used are flutes and a drum. Stages were erected at all the principal Shinto temples and each temple had its staff of dancers. The Kagura dance can still be seen at the temple of Kasuga at Nara. Like the Chinese, the Japanese lack dances known to us as folk-dancing. In the art of dancing Japan far surpasses China, this being due to the more emotional and poetic character of the race. The dancing of Japan, like its other arts, is outspokenly impressionistic and symbolic. It is graceful and dainty and gives evidence of thorough refinement.