Several Traditions, Not One
There is no single thing called Japanese dance. The country has ritual dances at shrines, court dances, theatre dances, village festival dances and contemporary stage forms, and they developed under different patrons and for different audiences. Two Japanese words help sort them out. Mai is generally a circling, gliding style with an emphasis on slow, controlled movement, and odori is a more rhythmic, stepping and leaping style. The two terms overlap in practice, and the combined word buyo came into use later as a general term for dance as a stage art.
Ritual and Court Roots
The earliest dance in Japan is connected with ritual. Dances offered to the kami at shrines are called kagura, and they survive in many forms across the country, from refined court versions to vigorous village ones. Folk dances tied to the farming year, to prayers for harvest and to the welcoming of ancestors in the Obon season are also very old in spirit, though the exact origins of most are impossible to date.
At the imperial court, dance arrived with music from the continent, and the court dance known as bugaku is performed together with gagaku. Bugaku dancers wear elaborate costumes and sometimes masks, and the movements are slow and formal. Much of what we call Japanese music history shares the same roots with these dances.
Noh: Movement as Restraint
In the medieval period, Noh brought dance into a form of drama. A Noh performer moves with a gliding walk, feet sliding along the floor, and the smallest gestures carry meaning. Tilting the masked face slightly can suggest sorrow, and raising a hand to the brow can mean weeping. Because of this, Noh dance has often been described as an art of withholding. The mood has links to yugen beauty and to the pause-filled style discussed under the concept of ma, and it also reflects the Zen Buddhism that influenced warrior-class taste. The stories often involve ghosts and memory, which suits the form of noh theatre.
Kabuki and the Birth of Nihon Buyo
Kabuki began in the early Edo period with performances that mixed dance and drama, and early troupes were soon restricted by authorities. Over time, the theatre settled into a style performed by male actors, with the onnagata specializing in female roles. Dance remained at the center of kabuki, and shamisen-accompanied pieces were created especially for dance scenes.
Nihon buyo, meaning “Japanese dance,” is the stage dance tradition that grew out of kabuki movement and is now also taught and performed separately from the theatre. It draws on Noh, on folk dance and on the gestures of everyday life. Dancers wear kimono and often hold props such as fans, parasols or hand towels, and a closed folding fan can become a cup, a sword or the moon. Folding fans and Japanese umbrellas, familiar from daily life, become tools of storytelling this way.
The tradition is organized into schools, each with its own lineage of teachers and its own repertoire. Learning is typically done by imitation over many years, in the manner of many Japanese arts, with a strong respect for form before personal expression. Nihon buyo is also one of the accomplishments traditionally taught within the geisha tradition.
Bunraku, Folk Dances and Festival Odori
The puppet theatre known as bunraku shared stories and music with kabuki, and some dance pieces were adapted between the two. Outside the theatre, communal dances kept going. Bon dances in summer, in which people form a circle around a drum platform, are probably the form most visitors encounter, and regional festival dances can be very different from each other. These are participatory, with no sharp line between performers and audience, which is quite unlike the highly trained stage arts.
Modernization and New Forms
During the Meiji period, Western ideas of ballet, theatre and the concert stage reached Japan. Some artists tried to reform traditional dance, and a movement in the early twentieth century created new works that combined buyo technique with modern subjects. Others took up ballet and modern dance, and today Japan has its own modern dance and ballet scenes, along with a large number of amateur students.
Butoh
Butoh is the best-known Japanese contemporary dance form abroad. It emerged in the years after the Second World War, in a time of social change, and is generally associated with a small group of founding artists who rejected both Western ballet and the established Japanese theatre. Their work was often slow, strange and deliberately unglamorous. Performers might have shaved heads and white body paint, move in extreme slow motion, and appear to be transformed by invisible forces.
Butoh has no single technique. Different artists and companies stress different ideas, such as the body as something shaped by gravity, memory or the earth. Because it is contested what counts as butoh, writers tend to describe it as a family of approaches rather than a style. The form spread widely, and today there are butoh practitioners in many countries who blend it with their own traditions.
What Links the Forms
Despite their differences, many Japanese dance forms share certain tendencies. Weight is often kept low, with bent knees and a steady, sliding step. Stillness is treated as part of the movement. Costume and props matter, and the body is not separated from the music or the story. These are tendencies rather than laws, and each art has its own quirks. Seeing a live performance, or a recording with a good explanation, is the best way to feel the differences between a Noh walk, a buyo turn and a butoh crouch.