From nishi-m@sm.sony.co.jp Mon Mar 13 10:40:29 GMT 1995 Article: 18131 of rec.juggling Newsgroups: rec.juggling Path: hal.COM!olivea!spool.mu.edu!torn!nott!pnfi!gateway!sm.sony.co.jp!nishi-m From: nishi-m@sm.sony.co.jp (Masaki Nishikawa) Subject: Re: History of Juggling Message-ID: <9503131008.AA14562@nishim1.sm.sony.co.jp> Sender: juggling@pnfi.forestry.ca Reply-To: nishi-m@sm.sony.co.jp Organization: Petawawa National Forestry Institute, Canadian Forestry Service Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 10:12:30 GMT Lines: 88 I'm happy because some people are interested in my articles about juggling in Japan. In , conway@bdt.com wrote: >In article <9503091000.AA11059@nishim1.sm.sony.co.jp>, >nishi-m@sm.sony.co.jp (Masaki Nishikawa) wrote: >> ... >>"Daikagura" means Japanese traditional juggling. >> ... > >Would daikagura also be performed by women, by men, or by both? Most of daikagura performers are men, but I've seen Kosen Kagami's daughter performed daikagura and I've seen another good young female performer on TV. As for old days, there was sexism in Japan, so I suspect all of the daikagura performers were men. (I'm not sure at all.) >And what sort of juggling was involved? Was the nukekago >(the 'bottomless basket' that Kosen Kagami used in Burlington) part of >daikagura? What about rolling things on umbrellas? (And is there Japanese >word for that skill?) Both of them are important parts of daikagura. Kosen Kagami is a daikagura master and he is the head of a "daikagura performer family". (In Japan, traditional professional performers make "families" (not real ones). The members in a "family" use same family name and first names given by the head. They don't use their real names for performance.) There is no good term for the skill with umbrella. It is just called "trick with umbrella" or "umbrella spinning" in Japanese. I can do it a little, but mine is far below from Kagami's master work. (I found Andrew Conway's picture with umbrella in JIS. It's cool! ) "Daikagura" performance contains juggling and many object manipulations in it. It includes "drum stick" juggling similar to club juggling, many variations of object balancing, various body rolls with a ball, devil sticking, cigar-box-like actions with 2 dram sticks and a ball, plate spinning, etc. Traditional dances and comedies are important parts of daikagura, too. (Therefore, to be strict, the word "daikagura" isn't exactly equal to "Japanese juggling".) >How about staff or spear manipulation, or traditional >Chinese tricks such as diabolo or devil stick? Style of traditional Japanese juggling performance is very different from the Chinese one. In China, juggling is performed as a part of circus arts (Am I correct?). In Japan, juggling has almost nothing to do with circus arts like tumbling, contortion, and so on. Daikagura is performed in combination with funny story telling "rakugo" in "yose" theaters. You can also find European style juggling, top spinning and magic in "yose", but there is no physical circus arts in "yose" as far as I know. There is no staff, sword, spear manipulation skill with flourish that can be seen in Chinese circus. Staff, sword, spear were supporsed to be for "samurai" class as their weapons. Sword and spear were believed to be the symbol of "samurai spirit". I think if a juggler had performed spear manipulation in Edo era (AC1603-1967) he would have been challenged by samurais and would have ended up with being killed or injured. (Samrais played sword/spear dance on occasions, but it was for demonstration of their skill and spirit as swordmen, not as performers.) I've seen devil stick performed in daikagura, but it was different from the European ones. The center stick was a little longer and it wasn't tapered into the center. The hand sticks were thicker than European ones. I don't know whether if the idea of Japanese devil stick was imported directly from China, imported relative recently through Europe, or invented in Japan independently. As far asJapanese diabolo. There is a top manipulated horizontally on string, but it is a top, not a diabolo. It doesn't have two bells, but does have a spindle sticks out from both sides of the body like normal tops. (Of course, top and diabolo work under the same physical law.) I wonder why there is no diabolo in Japan though China influenced Japan very much. --------- Masaki Nishikawa (nishi-m@sm.sony.co.jp)