Author's Note: My research credits include -
Good ol' wikipedia
This book: Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture Through Japanese Dance by Tomie Hahn. I did not come even close to covering this entire anthropological text, so definitely do check it out.
This article: "Dance Notes: teaching the traditions of nihon buyo" by Jesse Waldman
This video series on Vimeo: The JASGA Nihon Buyo Workshop
Additional Notes: This chapter was difficult, because even as a former dancer - which I am - it's hard to write well about dance lessons.
11.
"Our next section," said Anko, "is dance. Dance is important to being a ninja in several respects, chiefly because a fight is rather like a dance. It requires intense physical exertion and training, and you have to feel it inside you - it is a silent way to connect two people, the dancers to each other and the dancers to the audience. The key to dancing is to know. Not just with your mind, but with your body, as the two are interdependent. And in a fight, it's much the same.
"I will be teaching you traditional dancing, in the Nihon Buyo style. But first, let's go over a bit of back history for what traditional dancing consists of.
"There is a common myth as to the origins of traditional dance. Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, had a brother, Susanoo, who was the guardian of the underworld and also a mischievous trickster. Well, one day Susanoo insulted Amaterasu, and she hid herself within a cave, leaving only darkness behind. The gods summoned Ama, a lesser goddess, and she came out, scantily clad, and performed a comical, erotic dance for the gods on an overturned tub. The gods laughed so loudly that Amaterasu came out to see what was going on, and the minute she did, the world was lit again. A mirror had been left at the mouth of the cave, showing Amaterasu her own beauty, and vain till the end, she came out from hiding. So in a roundabout way, dance brought light to the world.
"This is still the case, on a literal level - dance tends to flourish after very dark periods in history, such as wars. Dance brings joy, life, exuberance, even arousal. But let's go to a more conventionally historical explanation for the origin of dance.
"Traditional dance has a long history, dating back even before the warring clans era. See, we'll go over this in more detail later, but the Elemental Nations started out as a lot of rural farmers and hunter-gatherers. Small tribes of warrior families would fight each other over land. After chakra came to be discovered, ninja clans rose up in fury and started battling one another. Nations were carved out of this chaos, ruled by Daimyo lords, and any nation who wanted to be protected from other clans and nations came to have what we now call a Hidden Village - a military base full of powerful ninja. We Konoha ninja, for example, protect Fire Country. We keep its enemies at bay, and in return we are allowed to live on its forested land. The advent of Hidden Villages - large groups of ninja clans united through an alliance - brought relative peace to the world. There are still periods of war, but war is no longer constant.
"But way back before any of this, back before the advent of ninja even, there has always been dance. And it has always been a method of conversation between different peoples.
"The earliest dances were probably Shinto theatrical dances called Kagura - a precursor to modern Noh drama - and folk dances. There were folk dances for everything: rice production, fishing… in other words, people would dance hoping for a good harvest or a good catch. There were rain dances, especially used in periods of enormous drought. I believe there are still rain dances in Suna, which has very little water and also a complex, ancient honor system and code of hierarchy the likes of which doesn't seem to have really survived in any other part of the world.
"Dances are suffixed with various words, including -odori, -asobi, and -mai. Mai and Odori are the two main dance groups. Mai (which can also be pronounced bu) and Odori (which can also be pronounced yo) were combined to make the modern dance term Buyo. Nihon simply means 'authentic to the Elemental Nations.'
"However, Mai and Odori were originally separate. Mai is a reserved form of dancing that has circling movements; Noh dances are of this tradition. Odori has more vigorous stepping movements and is more energetic; Kabuki dances are of this tradition.
"So let's go over each element in turn.
"Kabuki is a traditional dance-drama with elaborate makeup. Kabuki theater, as you know, is quite famous - well, Kabuki's essential element is dance.
"Noh Mai is a dance done to music that is made by flutes and small hand drums, and later vocal and percussion music. Noh Mai is meant to be elegant and beautiful, and often involves elaborate costumes, the most important part of which is the famous Noh mask whose features are frozen.
"Bon Odori is a dance performed during the Obon festival. It is a dance meant to welcome the spirits of the dead, and is performed differently in every region. Usually, in a bon dance, everyone dances around a yagura, a high wooden scaffold."
"Morbid," said Ino in fascination.
"Well, if you're going to symbolize death," Sakura pointed out, "a scaffold will do it."
"Sensei," said Hinata, frowning, "what about our dance? Nihon Buyo?"
"I was just about to get to that," said Anko. "Nihon Buyo is intended as a kind of dance entertainment on stage. It is a refined dance that combines all other dances. It stemmed off from the energy and vigorousness of Kabuki, came to include the circular movements and tools such as sensu fans used in Noh, then came to include the spinning and jumping of folk dances, and finally came a mixture of various Western overseas cultures.
"It is most famous," said Anko, "as the style of dance performed by geisha."
"Sensei," said Sakura uncertainly, "I've noticed a lot of the kunoichi arts seem to be shared by geisha..."
"Yeah!" added Ino. "How close is the connection?"
"Well," said Anko thoughtfully, "let me put it to you this way. Some failed kunoichi go on to become housewives and mothers, that is true. But far more go on to become geisha. What a geisha is meant to do and what a kunoichi is meant to do are very closely connected. Both are meant to enchant, both are meant to be beautiful, both are meant to charm, both are meant to please… Both are also allowed boyfriends outside their nights out or seduction missions, by the way.
"But geisha are first and foremost entertainers. Men don't pay to have sex with them, they pay to spend a few hours in the company and with the seemingly rapt attention of a beautiful, charming, talented woman.
"Kunoichi, meanwhile, are seductresses. They entertain the man for a while before taking him into the bedroom. Then, while his guard is down, they get as much information as they can from him. And then, while he's asleep, they steal all his money, slit his throat, and run like hell." Here, Anko smirked. "There's an old saying: 'Never pick a fight with a woman. When men fight, they have rules. When women fight, they have no rules.' Kunoichi personify that. We lie, we seduce, we steal, we assassinate, and we kick 'em where the sun don't shine.
"So that means there are a couple of key differences in training between geisha and kunoichi. Geisha learn how to play instruments, which kunoichi don't; kunoichi learn ikebana, which geisha don't. Geisha also don't learn cooking or sexual seduction, though they do learn conversation, games and flirtation in much the same way kunoichi do.
"Let me explain these differences. It's pretty simple. Geisha are entertainers. If a kunoichi does her job right, she doesn't need to learn how to play an instrument and be an entertainer. She pours you your drink, she does her dance, she flirts with you, and then you hightail it out of there to, you know… do that thing people do in bed when they're not sleeping. That's where the sexual seduction training comes in. For geisha, this is never an issue, because they never get there.
"However, kunoichi are also sometimes spies in households. They are your servants, your concubine, etc. Which means they need to learn lovely household skills, such as cooking and ikebana. See?"
"So this dance thing is kind of where it all comes together," Ino guessed.
"After this, all that's left is calligraphy and poetry, then a brief aside into Zen Buddhism. Then we get into the sexual stuff." Anko grinned viciously.
The girls swallowed.
And so they began dance training.
"Follow my lead," said Anko in a dance studio she had rented out, and she just began this weaving, complex dance before the mirror. The girls tried, panicked and stumbling, to follow her lead - they looked ridiculous and in under a minute, Hinata had tripped and landed painfully on her elbows, Ino had fallen on her ass, and Sakura had slipped into a split.
Anko paused and laughed. Loudly. The girls blushed and glared at her.
"Sorry, girls, that's the essence of Nihon Buyo," said Anko, grinning. "You don't learn the steps and then the dance. Instead, you learn the whole thing all at once. But let me give you some help. Watch me give you a tutorial a few times first, then try it yourself with my lead. Think of it like taijutsu - you see the forms, you practice the forms along with the instructor, then you practice them by yourself."
The first thing they learned was that much of Nihon Buyo dance was a kind of pantomime. Each dance told a story.
First Dance, for example, was the story of a maiden meeting a young man while going out to get water at a well. She sees him when she looks up at a plum tree. Later they get together and drink sake wine. The background music was lots of traditional singing (the singing always told the story of the dance) and plucking string instruments such as shamisen. It involved slow, graceful waves of movement with the fan, and lots of getting lower to the ground, bent knees, legs tensed, and curving one's hips back and forth - Anko-sensei said their stances were centered around their hara, the center of their stomach and their chakra center - with lots of turns and twists as the fan was waved.
"This is how all Nihon Buyo will be," Anko called over her shoulder. "It's the farthest thing from ballet."
One could actually see the acting out of the story inherent in each gesture. The point for a kunoichi, Anko said, was to produce a feeling of shyness and mystery hidden within the gestures to the viewer. One knelt, placed one's fan before oneself, and bowed at the end of the dance - this, again, was the same with all dances.
"I feel really self conscious when I do this," said Hinata at last. "I feel like a dork." The other two girls nodded in agreement. "Is there any way to… not feel like that, Anko-sensei?"
"Imagine the sexiest, toughest, most serene woman you can think of - and pretend you're her, for everything to do with the kunoichi arts," said Anko.
After this, they got better - more confident.
Second Dance required multiple dancers at once - women going out to look at cherry blossoms together was the theme of this story. Second Dance was difficult for the three girls because it required perfect synchronization. They had to each get the timing just right - which meant they easily got frustrated with each other, and arguments were had. Anko always broke up each fight firmly, made them apologize, and told them to try again.
And thus the dances went in this way, both single person dances and multiple person dances. One other dance they learned was the Sakura Sakura Dance, which was much quicker and involved more overt gestures like bending, tilting, and blowing a kiss.
Anko was a strict instructor. She would watch them do the same dance over and over again, constantly making corrections until it was perfect. Nihon Buyo did not look very physically exhausting at first, but by the time they were finished sometimes they would be dripping with sweat.
The acting was also difficult. One had to convey the sensation of watching an ocean, for example, without the ocean actually being there. One could do this by waving the fan, signifying rippling waves, and stepping hurriedly backward as if to keep from getting wet.
"You have to really see and feel the ocean in front of you," Anko said. "If you do that, so the theory goes, the audience will also understand."
"All this is great," said Anko one day during a lecture-style lesson, "but none of it will mean anything if you don't understand the mentality behind Nihon Buyo dancing.
"The first and most important thing to understand about Nihon Buyo, or indeed any of the kunoichi arts, is transmission. What I mean by this is that any art is passed down, from teacher to student to teacher to student. We have retained some hierarchy even in the unusually peaceful, pastoral, and democratic village of Konoha. All arts - even the ninja arts - are learned from transmission of teacher to student in a kind of hierarchy.
"It is this way even for non-kunoichi in a traditional school of dance. Traditional dance schools practice the iemoto system, in which there is the student, then the teacher, then the Iemoto (or headmaster), and then the Soke (or previous headmaster). This headmaster can be a man, but is most often a woman. In any case, hierarchy is extremely important.
"It is this way for a ninja as well. If your superior orders you to do something illegal, for example, and you do it - it is your superior who is punished. Not you."
"What if we don't want to do the illegal, immoral thing?" Hinata asked worriedly.
Anko looked torn for a moment. "Report the order to a superior higher than them," she said at last. "It's a tricky situation, and reactions vary from person to person, but that would be my advice. If the whole system is corrupt… I cannot instruct you further."
"Huh?" said Ino articulately.
"She means that's how rebellions happen," said Sakura grimly. Anko said nothing, but she gave a tight nod.
"So… you claim this system of transmission through hierarchy is so important. Does that continue once you graduate from the Ninja Academy - or training, or whatever - and go out into the field?" asked Ino curiously.
"Certainly," said Anko. "The superior who does not teach his juniors his ways out in the field is a very dishonorable and inept superior indeed. For a truly excellent superior, every day, every mission, is a lesson. Once you become superiors yourselves, the same will apply to you. But for now, I'm your superior, and you learn from me.
"But back to dance.
"Another thing one can learn from dance is respect for elders. In a true dance school, while young adulthood through thirty is considered to be prime, and while youthful beauty can capture an audience, most Nihon Buyo dancers continue dancing until they can no longer move. It is thought that a mature dancer has more experience and technique, to make up for her lack of youth. So when you see an aged dancer or kunoichi, you should have the highest respect for her superior technique. Age does not mean weakness; it means knowledge.
"In the matter of an aged kunoichi or even an aged male ninja in particular… you have to keep in mind, in order to get to that age, they had to survive every single mission they've taken up till that point. That should command your respect. Hokage-sama, for example, is very old - but that just means that if he started ninja life as a child or teenager, and is still a successful ninja at sixty, he's survived, what - forty or fifty years of hard missions? As have his two advisors?"
The girls' eyes had widened.
"Yeah," said Anko, "exactly. And that's why he and his former teammates head the village.
"In dance, one must also have respect for one's tools. The sensu fan, for example, should always be stepped around, not on or over, should be kept cleaned and polished, and should be replaced once every few years. It's the same with your ninja equipment, by the way.
"Now we get into more spiritual aspects of traditional dance. For example, at the end of a dance or, in traditional schools, when you are bowing to a teacher, you kneel, place the fan at arm's length from you, and then bow. This is a metaphor. The fan creates a barrier between the student and the teacher, drawing attention to the space in between them. The line is a spiritual boundary, honored as a kind of devotional space. When you bow, you acknowledge the difference between yourself and the teacher, but your bow respectfully honors both of you.
"Dance, like fighting, is spiritual in nature. It is a process of understanding oneself and one's spirit. One learns through the body, and that translates into one's heart, the inner self within the body. By understanding your heart and yourself, you can then become anyone. The technical term for one's inner self, heart, soul, spirit is kokoro. Dance teaches you to find your own kokoro, the very same center that holds you up throughout fights."
"How do we find kokoro, Sensei?" said Hinata. "How do we know when we've found it?"
"You find it through mindfulness. Do you know what that is? You'll learn more about it when I teach you Zen Buddhism - all these practices are interrelated. But basically, mindfulness says that you let go of all extraneous thoughts and focus only on what you must do in the present moment. To learn all the rules, and focus on practicing them in perfect synchronization, and concentrate on nothing else but that - that is mindfulness. And through this, we learn who we really are. We find our kokoro.
"Mindfulness will help you in stressful situations out in the field. Don't worry, don't fret, don't ponder. Focus only on what you must do. That is how you will succeed. It is a hard practice, but you become more successful at it with time.
"Thus, when we teach a person, it is very important that we do it well, because we are also teaching their spirit. The body's actual form and actions embody the nature - or spirit - of the person. That's why Zen teaches different physical forms for meditation and other practices - the belief goes that if your body moves correctly, your mind will follow. So the more experiences you have and the more you train your body, the more you mindfully focus on your body and the current moment, the stronger your spirit is. Incidentally, this is also how you increase your chakra - through physical training and experience. So when you dance, even though you are not fighting, your chakra gets stronger.
"There is an ancient saying: 'Better an inch of practice than a foot of preaching.' When you dance, or when you fight, or when you train, you learn something which is inexpressible through words. A deeper understanding known only to a select few."
Anko smiled at the looks of childish awe on her students' faces.
"Now, there are four main 'aesthetic' principles when it comes to dancing, and indeed almost any traditional art:
"First is simplicity, or wabi, which I have taught you about already.
"Second is irregularity. We covered this a bit in tea ceremony, wherein you have to use varying numbers and shapes of your tea making utensils, for example. But let me go into irregularity a little more in-depth. You see, it is believed that irregularity reflects nature, and that true life is always imperfect. Art is meant to celebrate and appreciate that. Irregularity is expressed in Nihon Buyo through the stances we take in dance. Very rarely are we perfectly symmetrical, one steady straight line of a body. No, usually we are positioned so that one leg is forward and bent, each arm is held at a different position, and the torso is turned with the feet aligned in a different direction.
"Third there is suggestion. Ninja, for example, are told to look 'underneath the underneath.' To look beneath the surface and see what's really there. Our culture is obsessed with mystery, and this is expressed through the kimono you wear when you dance. Kimono show very little of the body, leaving almost everything to the imagination. This is considered erotic. The neck, however, sometimes called the most beautiful part of a woman's body, is almost always exposed. So always put your neck to best effect when seducing, even if it means you have to paint on your neck as geisha do. We also show subtlety and implication when we do dancing itself - what is telling a story simply with body and sensu fan, if not a lesson in implication?
"Fourth is the idea of impermanence. People die; we must accept that. Seasons change and plants wither; we must also accept that. These are Buddhist tenets. Flower arrangements only last for so long, all tea ceremonies must end, and so must all dances. The process of transmission in dance or in ninjutsu also reflects impermanence: the teacher imparts lessons to the student because the teacher is not going to be around forever. Eventually I'm gonna die. Deal with it. I have."
There was a solemn quiet in the pause that followed.
At the end of it all, they had a dance recital. They dressed in their best kimono, the colors bringing out their skin and hair tones beautifully, and they each did a separate dance before coming together at the end to do a multiple person synchronized dance.
Anko was the viewer, and they were all aware of how critical she was.
But they really had improved. They did well. Each girl showed a confidence, shyness, mischief, and mystery far beyond her age, playing her part beautifully. They weaved seductively, their fans waving, and they were good. She could admit it privately to herself. They had done well.
Experts in tea ceremony, beautiful flower arrangers, seductive dancers, excellent cooks, and quite lovely-looking kunoichi, they were improving rapidly. More importantly, they had calmed and matured, and by now Anko's daily exercise routine barely phased them at all.
Just a few more sections in the kunoichi arts and then they would be on to the academics and fighting skills of becoming a shinobi.
