The Expressive Dimensions of Folk Performing Arts: A Gebserian Approach to Kagura

Abstract

Kagura is one of the oldest forms of Shinto folk performing arts in Japan. Performed as part of local religious festivals, it is considered to be a means of communicating with kami (deities). The existing studies tend to describe kagura as “a text in motion” and to explain it as a functional and purposive behavior, but without exploring the very act of “expressing.” In order to explore the expressive dimensions of kagura, I employ a neo-Kantian Gebserian approach that focuses on multidimensional modes of expression and seek to offer the interpretive “contexts” of the very act of expressing kami (kagura), contexts of awareness that sustain and support the divine kagura world. The purpose of this article is to reveal kagura in the “deficient mode” insofar as its manifestations will have to be through another mode of awareness. Accordingly, the present article intends to challenge the singular mode of expression, which reduces kagura to a mere sign system. Revealing what sustains this reduction would open a means of “appreciating” the multiple modes of expression.

Keywords

Shinto / kagura / folk performing arts / Gebserian approach / space and time

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