Festival ’90 : PRESERVING AN ANCIENT TRADITION : Japan’s Uwanuda Kagura Troupe debuts with a form of Shinto song and dance rooted in ritual dating back more than a millennium

These days Tokyo might leave a visitor with the impression that Japan’s native folk performing arts have mostly been supplanted by those of the West. Night life offers everything from bluegrass to Beethoven.

But ancient traditions are alive and well in modern Japan, if not so much in Tokyo, in more provincial areas, thanks to “hozonkai,” or preservation societies. Hundreds of nationally funded and manymore locally sponsored hozonkai maintain traditional arts, passing it along to future generations.

One organization is the Uwanuda Kagura Troupe, based in the mountainside village of Nishiki-cho, population 5,080, located 25 miles southwest of Hiroshima City in southern Honshu. Most of its 15 members are between 36 to 66 years old, and work in the village agricultural and lumber businesses.

Gathering weekly at the Shiratori Shrine, they practice kagura, a form of Shinto song and dance that has spanned more than a millennium. Although not professionals, they make about 40 performances a year, of which half are during the traditional Autumn Festival. On Sept. 6, the troupe makes its debut as part of the 1990 Los Angeles Festival.

Members include eight farmers, three woodcutters, two in lumber-related jobs and an employee at a U.S. military base. Most come from long lines of kagura performers.

Kagura was initially the name given to a type of shamanistic ritual of invoking the gods that began in Japan at least as early as the Ninth Century. Nowadays, it has lost the original ritual purpose and the word more often refers to the associated performance, of which there are more variations than Japan has prefectures.

The Uwanuda group is part of the Izumo branch of kagura based in neighboring Shimane Prefecture, the setting for most of Japanese mythology. It was in Shimane that the imperial clan was thought to have descended from the ancient gods.

Tadaomi Harada, the troupe’s choreographer-arranger, bases his work on the Kojiki, or Records of Ancient Matters, ca. 712, Japan’s earliest extant historical record. Twelve stories from the Kojiki form Uwanuda Kagura Troupe’s repertory, three of which will be performed in Los Angeles.

The first, “Yomotsu-shikome,” or “Disfigured Women in the Afterworld,” recounts the gruesome story of the god Izanagi and his wife Izanami, the seventh generation of Japanese deities.

The second, “Hamata-no-orochi,” a tale of an eight-headed, eight-tailed giant snake, is a favorite among Japanese children that tells the story of an old couple plagued by a monster snake that emerges from a nearby river once a year to eat one of their daughters. The mischievous god Susano, banished from heaven for his heinous pranks, offers to kill the monster in exchange for their last daughter, a task he accomplishes by giving the snake a special sake.

When Susano strikes his final blow, he finds a magnificent sword in one of the snake’s tails, he is forgiven his pranks and allowed back into heaven when he offers it as a peace offering to his sister, the sun goddess. The sword, “Ame no murakumo no tsurugi,” is still believed to be kept by the royal family as a symbol of the emperor.

The last and least-known work, “Ebisu-sama Tai Tsuri,” or “The God Ebisu Catching Red Snapper,” is the account of the sun goddess, Amaterasu-omikami, reclaiming the land of Izumo from Ebisu, a god known mostly for his love of fishing.

Akira Tani, chairman of the Nishiki-cho board of education, said members of Uwanuda Kagura hope its L.A. visit can bridge more Japan-American cultural exchanges.”