Hayachine Kagura: A Japanese performing art

Few months  back I had a chance to know about this performing art of Japan from Prof. Sumio Murijiri, who is a Fellow of TOKYO foundation and a project scholar of WASEDA University, Theatre Museum, Tokyo. He is also a visiting professor of Mangalore University. His research focuses on the similarities between Hayachine kagura and Yakshagana – an art form of South Canara.

I was working for visual media and my work during that time was to gather information about art and culture of South Canara for television. I approached the professor to know about his research, as my idea was to shoot a feature on Tulu culture with the help of his inputs. During talks the professor told me about Hayachine Kagura. He also showed me the photographs and vedios of this art. Then he handed me an article written by him about the similarities between these two artforms, which I found very interesting.

 

 The article gives an introduction to the centuries old art and tries to spot the similarities between two art-forms which are geographically seperated by thousands of miles.

In Japanese language Hayachina means ’sacred mountain’. As we know most of the Japanese relegions give a great importance to the mountains. For them these mountains are life and God. They worship these mountains and in these mountains we find lot of villages enjoying the age-old traditions of Japan. These villages are isolated from the modern towns which makes them sustain their traditional lifestyle. There are many Kaguras still existing in these mountains, Hayachine kagura being one among them.

Hayachine Kagura was initially a part of royal traditions. Gradually, it seperated itself from the palace and developed itself to become a folk art.

Hayachina Kagura is performed in villages. Just like Yakshagana, there are many troups which roam from one village to another. These troups perform only in the pre-decided villages called as ‘kasumys’. One troup is not supposed to perform in the village allocated to other troup. It rarely happens. When this thing happens two artists from opposite troups have to wear the Lion Mask and battle it out. The one whose mask falls first or the one whose lion’s toungue comes out will be the loser.

The artists keep the box containing the dress and other things in a house called as the ‘Kagura house’. This is either a priest’s house or the house of a daughter of an artist from their own troup.  The villagers have a great deal of respect for this house.

The stage to perform kagura is usually the front yard of a house. The stage set-up is quite simple. The stage is open from three sides and the audience can watch the performance from these sides. The backdrop of the stage carries the symbol of the troup.

There is a special ritual to take the dress from the box. Then a lion dance follows. The initial phase of kagura is of prayers. Then the performance starts which is full of hand movements. Unlike Yakshagana, there are no dialogues to the charecters. The artists have to say everything from their facial expressions and hand movements. Sometimes the charecters are seen wearing the masks and sometimes without the masks.  One more feature of this kagura is all the actors are given same preference. In Yakshagana that is not the case. Senior artist is always considered superior to the young artists and they appear in the later phase of the performance of yakshagana. In Kagura the singer of the backstage play a vital role, which makes him the key person or a director of the of the show.

In yakshagana the basic scriptures are usually are based on ancient mythology and are taken from the writings of ‘Parthisubba’. Hayachina Kagura also follows the same path. The Kagura songs are based on the traditional mountain worshipping scripts of Japan.

Professor Morijiri finds lot of such similarities between these two art forms.

Karvalo – in search of the universal truth

Poorna Chandra Tejaswi has always been one of my favourite writers. His writings cover a wide range of topics from the latin american life style to the flora and fauna of western ghats. Even the desciplines of his work range a great deal from novels, short stories, non-fictions to transliterations.
His Millenium series is undoubtedly a unique concept by itself. In this series he caters the kannada book lovers with the wonders of the world. The topics like moon missions, world wars, Inca-Aztec civilizations are really a treat to read.
Today I thought I would pen down my views on his work Karvalo – one of the widely read novels. This novel has been translated to many languages all over the world, which shows its immense universal appeal.
Karvalo is a very realistic story which takes place in a remote village of the western ghats of Karnataka. This is a story exploring the existence of every indivisual living thing in this universe.
Why are we living today? What made us exist the way we do today? What if our evolution had taken some other path and ended up in forming something other than a homosepien. What if dinosaurs had managed to exist today, battling all the natural calamities? There are many such questions which pop out as you go through the pages of Karvalo. These are the fundamental questions which kept on coming back from the days of stone age man to the days of Charles Darwin and to this era of DNA technology.
In Karvalo, the protagonist is a well educated farmer, who is also the narrator of the story. Inspite of his great interest in rural lifestyle, his unsuccessful agricultural work makes him think to quit everything and head towards the city. During this time he meets Karvalo, a middle aged scientist. Their first few meetings were made to discuss the agricultural difficulties which the protogonist had to share with the scientist. There is another interesting charecter Mandanna who makes his appearance in the initial stage of the novel. He is a local cowboy who is considered as a good-for-nothing fellow by the villagers and his friends.
The narrator of this story wonders when he finds that Mandanna and Karvalo are very close to each other. He wonders what is the thing which brings them to a common platform. What is that a scientist finds so special in a local cowboy?
As the story moves, we see the narrrator getting an explanation from the scientist himself as to the importance of Mandanna. Mandanna might have been labelled a dumb guy, but he too has some unique skills in his kitty which makes him a special aqquaintance of the scientist. Mandanna’s ‘observational skill’ is the thing which made Karvalo choose him as a person to help him with his research work. As Karvalo says, Mandanna is very good at identifying different creatures.
One fine day Karvalo reveals that his fellow ’student’ Mandanna had seen an endangered reptile in the jungle, which was previously thought to have been extinct. It is a flying lizard which opens a wing-like organ when it has to fly from one place to another. Karvalo is now on a mission to spot the creature. Now he asks the narrator to join his team, which already includes the scientist, Mandanna, a camera man and a womaniser cook.
Their journey towards the lizard is the story of this novel. The series of discussions and revealations which happens in their expedition gives a philosophical touch to the story. The questions like ‘Do they find the flying lizard?’ become immaterial when you find that it is the truth of life what they were in search of.
I find the serious discussions by the charecters very interesting to read. In one chapter there is a discussion about the existence of God. A believer of God thinks that the rising sun, stars and wonders of natures are the examples which show the existance of God. But quiet ironically these are the same examples which make a non-believer think that there is no such thing as God. Finally it is the examples which are true and the all the conclusions we draw from these examples are false. What a brilliant thought? Yes, you find lot of such discussions in this novel, which can give you a whole new idea about our life.
This is a story which makes you think about the wonders of nature. Some people may call it God; to some it is an ever-existing world. Call it the way you percieve, but it cant stop you from thinking about the universal question.
If you have not experienced the thrill of this novel yet, I suggest, give it a try.

It’s Parellel Cinema-yet so popular

There was a time when Hindi film industry – which finds a great pleasure by calling itself Bollywood – was flooded with DDLJ (dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge) and HAHK (hum apke hai kaun?) duplicates. Every single movie looked like a wedding album. Every director wanted to be Yash Chopra. Directors like Aditya Chopra, Suraj Barjatya and Karan Johar being their idols their movies revolved around either NRI love stories, college campus or soon to be married very indian couples. The plot, charecters and even the songs were monotonously boring and the movies were very predictible.

Suddenly to break this trend a new generation of film makers emerged. Despite the fact that their movies were made at shoe string budjet, they explored untouched territories of cinema. I find two of the film makers very special. One is Nagesh Kukanoor and other is Vishal Bharadwaj.
Nagesh Kukanoor is one of the gifted story-tellers of our time. The way he unfolds his stories will make any filmlover go crazy. His film Dor is one of my all time favourites. Nagesh, who was working in the US for a multinational company came to film industry just for the passion of film making. His first movie Hyderabad blues was a trend setter. It heralded an era of new wave films which were quite different from usual run of the mill films. Hyderabad Blue- telling the story of a US returned youngster- became a great hit in metro circles. Technically this was a very simple movie, with no great cinematography and no dance and songs. The success of this movie lead him to making Bollywood Calling, which saw Om Puri in the lead role. Then followed Rockford, Hyderabad blues-2, 3 – deewarein, Iqbal and Dor. Every film being different from each other and still managed to have kukanoor factor in it.
3- deewarien is a very unique film with a very special plot. It tells the story of three prisoners awaiting their death sentence. Three charecters – played by Jackey Shroff, Naseeruddin Shah and Nagesh himself – see death in different ways. One day a journalist – played by Juhi Chawla – intended to make a documentary comes to the prison. Then as the day of death sentence arrives some strange things happen. The backgroud of the prisoners are all interlinked which they are unable to notice. Suspence starts to make the audience thrilled.
Iqbal is an inspiring story of a wannabe cricketer. This film was critically acclaimed and was popular aswell. This movie gave a much needed break to Shreyas Thalapade – a very talented actor.
His next movie Dor is undoubtedly the best of his works. This movie reminds you of Hrishikesh Mukerji’s films. This is a story of two women seperated by miles – one whose husband was killed in Saudi and the other is the wife of the alledged murderer of first lady’s husband. What makes them meet and become friends? What is the dor (string) which made this tender relation? is the story of this movie. It is the very balanced treatment of the story and the mature performances make this movie a classic. All the other things like music, cinematography and editing add to it.
For Nagesah re-breaking the expectations of audience is ‘film making’. He has proved it several times in his works. His next projects are Bombay to Bangkok ( a comedy with Shreyas Thalpade and a Thai female actress in the lead) and a Muktha Arts production Aashayein ( with John Abraham in the lead role of a gambler).
The other prominent director of this generation is Vishal Bharadwaj. His movies are rooted to the soil. Whether it is Makdee, Maqbool or Omkara nativity makes a clear impact. He firmly sets his movies in the backdrop of the place of the plot, with the use of local slangs and local charecters. He is a man of music. Before wearing the directors cap, he composed music. His tunes from the Gulzar’s movie Maachis are very melodious. People still remember the title songs of television series Jungle book. But many of us don’t know that it is composed by Vishal Bharadwaj. Still today Gulzar and Vishal share a very special relation. Vishal’s adaptations of Shakesepere were widely appreciated. Maqbool ( adaptation of Macbeth) and Omkara (adaptaion of Othelo) are examples of experimentation cinema. Makdee – a children’s movie was appreciated for its child artists’ performances as well as Shabana Aszmi’s role. His yet to be released movie Blue Umbrella ( based on Ruskin Bond’s story) is also a children’s movie. Vishal thinks that Children’s movie is a neglected genre and he wants to make alternate movies for kids. There are many movies in the pipe line for this director. To complete the trilogy of Shakesperean adaptation there is a movie on Julius Ceaser; there is a project called Mantra and an international film project by the name Blood brothers – which is a thriller and has a message on HIV issue.
Nagesh and Vishal are two gems and people are looking for more and more good films from them. Keep going gentlemen.

Monsoon Rain

Finally, Kannada film industry is experiencing a fresh breeze of air. Yes, ‘Mungaaru male’ – which means Monsoon rain – is down-pouring a huge amount of moolah on the producers and making waves at the box office.
Kannada film industry – one of the oldest film industry in the country – has given some of the finest films to the nation. There was a time when non-karnataka cine lovers used to come to Bangalore, just to watch good kannada movies. Those were the golden days of parellel cinema, which saw critically acclaimed movies like Samskara, Ghatashradhdha, Ondaanondu kaaladalli, Phaniyamma and Chomana dudi etc. These realistic movies also made good money along with the usual formula movies.
As the time passed, the standard of kannada movies fell to such an extent that every movie getting released was either a replica of some other movie or a poor brother of the movies released in some other language. When there were some good movies coming out of Hindi or Tamil industries, kannada audience had to watch the disgusting stuffs. We had many tigers, Lions and hi-profile sobriquets as our frontline actors, who ruled the industry for ages. Other than enjoying the star-worshiping they could not give anything to kannadigas. When other film industries saw their senior artists (like Amitabh bachchan and Kamal Hasan) continue their quest for new roles; our lions, rebel stars, crazy stars sticked to the age old sing-dance-merry-go-round-the-tree type of roles. A new trend was established in the kannada movies, which showed nothing but bloodshed and cheap vulgarity. This whole process took place in two decades. These things made some of the good kannada movies go un-noticed.
After watching Mungaru male people have been wondering ‘Did we just see a kannada movie?’ That is the magic of this film.
This movie is a special one. I dont claim that it is a great movie. Infact it is a very simple movie. With no great cast or crew. It is the treatment which makes it a nice movie. The smooth dialogues, Beautiful cinematography, Boy or girl next door type of charecters and peppy songs with a very touchy lyrics are the things which make this The film.
In a city like Mangalore where an average college student would never go out for a kannada movie, now we see crowds of young people outside the theatre showing Mungaaru male. Bangalore FM stations, like the TV channels always broadcast new kannada songs. But I doubt any of them had the glamour and melody of Mungaaru male. Its songs are played in every FM and TV channels, in coffee pubs, Malls, buses and in ipods and cellphones.
This is indeed a good sign for kannada film industry. But How well can we continue this trend?