“No, Bon dancing has already faded away.”
“But the songs are still around, aren’t they?”
“It’s not that they’re not, but . . . ”
“Then, one of those.”
“Well, then one epic ballad . . . ” agreed the old man, and he then began a Bon epic, the Oeyama Epic. It was a truly quiet song and seemed to contain an old Buddhist tale.
According to my grandfather Ichigoro, the Hyogo Epic was the oldest. And I’d heard that his own song pulled water, so to speak, from the stream of the Hyogo Epic, but I’d never dreamed that I would hear, from an old man in the valley of Sago, in the north of Tsushima, a song almost no different in cadence from my grandfather’s. The Oeyama Epic tells of when Yorimitsu slays the young man Oeyama, who takes the guise of a demon and steals from others, and it’s thought that the lyrics of this song are relatively old.
The old man also sang the Otsuya Seishin and Shiraito epics, among others. And finally we came to where we could see the light of fires in the homes in the valley of Sago. Every time we passed in front of a house, the horses whinnied. The ones the three men rode were all males. And at every home, a mare was tied. With each house we passed, the stallions were drawn to the mares and tried to head in their direction. There is a line in a haiku about “a horse neighing when a horse passes,” and it was just so. There’s a knack to pulling in the reins when passing in front of a home, and it was no time for a song. Anyway, I’d arrived in Eko, in Sago Valley, having run more than seven miles. The man who’d helped me with my load said, “Tonight come to my house and spend the night,” so I parted with the other two and settled in at a farmhouse in the middle of rice paddies. And that night I listened to stories about the valley of Sago until after midnight.
The next day, I visited Old Man Suzuki who, already four years over eighty, was said to be the best singer in the valley. He was behind his house in the shade, making grass sandals. “Grandpa, I heard you’re the best singer in Sago, so I’ve come hoping you’d give me a chance to listen.”
“Where are you from? You say you’re from Tokyo? That’s where the emperor lives. These days the emperor has come on hard times.” After that we talked of various things and gradually, in time, he appeared to be in good spirits. Saying, “Maybe I’ll sing one song,” he started the Oeyama Epic. He was old and got out of breath, but definitely sang better than the old man of the night before. He had a practiced voice and could truly turn a verse. In places he even resembled one of those ballad singers accompanied by a samisen. I sat cross-legged on the ground, listening with my eyes closed. When he’d sung to the end, he simply said, “I’m out of breath, it’s no good,” and didn’t make a move to sing any more thereafter.
On the island of Tsushima there are six miracle-working goddesses of mercy. Traveling to worship these six Kannon first became popular around the end of medieval times. Men and women would form groups and go on a pilgrimage. In Sago there was also a hall for the Goddess of Mercy, and these flocks of pilgrims would come along and stay in the people’s homes. When this happened the young people in the village would go and sing, in turns, with the pilgrims. They competed based on the quality of a verse or a phrase, and in the end they would bet all sorts of things. The men would even make the women wager their own bodies. Apparently it was rare for a woman to ask a man to bet his own body, but at any rate, they would go that far. Old Man Suzuki had never lost in such a sing-off with the women. And, it was said, he had slept with nearly all of the beautiful women who had come along on pilgrimages. That was what had been meant the night before about the old man having enjoyed himself because he sang well. Anyway, in the north end of Tsushima, young men and women sang and danced together until around the end of the Meiji period. A fire was lit in the yard in front of the house where the pilgrims were staying, and the pilgrims and village youth would have sing-offs and even dance-offs, forgetting the passing of the night. At such times no distinction was made between married and unmarried women.
Songs were not just sung. They were accompanied by movement and sung back and forth. No doubt Old Man Suzuki was not only in the possession of a good voice but was also the most skilled in these parts at all the rest as well.
In the following year, 1951, I returned to Tsushima for research. I heard the most folksongs in Sasuna, near Sago. One evening I arrived in Sasuna, together with Shibusawa-sensei, chief of this research, and the women of the village performed a Kabuki dance for us. They sang each passage of the story of Chushingura, and the dance with which they accompanied it was truly refined. I became friendly with the old woman who sang. Remarking that I thought this area should have a lot of songs, I asked if she might sing for me. She consented with pleasure, and told me to come over that night.
The women who sang for Miyamoto, seeing him off at
the local pier. July 1951.
After finishing dinner at the place I was staying, I waited. When it had grown late, she came to get me. I went along carrying a bottle of sake. Four grandmothers, all over sixty, had gathered, and there were young people there as well. One of the older women said, “First you’ve got to start things off by singing,” so I sang a verse from the Bon festival dance from my hometown. They said that it was much like their own, and the grandmothers happily began to sing. To moisten their throats I poured them sake, and they drank freely. That was when the singing really started. Their voices were pretty. Thinking that if I took out my notebook I’d ruin the mood, I decided only to listen. When one woman had sung and grown short of breath, the next would begin. Many of the songs were from the Kabuki stage, and there was always dancing with the hands. Moving their hips, standing on their knees, although they danced only with their upper bodies, they radiated beauty from deep within. I was unable to see them simply as old farming women.
The young, seated men were attacked and disparaged by the older women, who called them artless monkeys. I learned that Bon festival dancing had thrived in Tsushima and that there was Bon dancing in nearly every inlet, up every creek. During this Bon dancing, they also had a scene from Kabuki, and it had become an important occasion for the learning of folksongs as well. But in Sasuna, for some reason, Bon dancing had fallen out of practice. This, it would seem, had reduced the number of opportunities for the elderly to pass on their knowledge to the young.
When the old women had sung, they demanded a song of me as well. I don’t know all that many songs, but for every three times they asked, I’d sing once. This, I thought, is how singing competitions came to pass. As the singing became more excited, more and more of the lyrics had to do with sex. The young people shrieked with elation, but the old women remained relatively composed. It had grown late, and the singing voices were loud, so people in the neighborhood gathered in front of the house. The singing continued in this way until about three. Of course, during that time there was also animated conversation. And so it was that I first came to have a notion, though faint, of what sing-offs in these parts had been like.
Chapter 3
Grandpa Kajita Tomigoro
[Tsushima Island, Nagasaki Prefecture, July 1950]
I called on Grandpa Kajita Tomigoro on a clear, bright morning late in July 1950, in the Azamo section of Tsutsu Village, on the island of Tsushima. Earlier at the post office, in the course of a conversation with the postmaster about various aspects of this village, I had learned that only one person from among the village’s first settlers was still alive. That was Grandpa Kajita. “Try visiting him,” the postmaster encouraged me. “He’s over eighty, but in good health, and he’s quite capable of conversation.”
Here was a person who had watched a village grow from its very beginnings. This was really something. I took my leave of the postmaster and went to visit the home of Grandpa Kajita nearby. He had retired from his position as head of the household and was living with his elderly wife. His son lived in the house just below theirs, where he also ran a confectionery store. I found Grandpa sitting and making fishing tackle