EISA

So, my wife and I and some folks from the lab are participating in an EISA team and we've been practicing for about a month or so... and it rules.

This weekend we went down to (Yonabaru first, but that's the very next blog) Naha to see the end of the 10,000 Eisa dancers parade.

Eisa seems to have derived its name from a Buddhist chant and is celebrated at the end of the Obon festival as a "one last hurrah" for the ancestors. More at wikipedia.

So the original Eisa dances would have looked something like this:

This team is from Uruma City, where we work.

Okinawa has, over the last century, been developing a more and more energetic dance:


The central region of Okinawa Honto (the main Island) is really renowned for their Eisa teams, and so I feel really honored to represent Okinawa City in the Zento (All-Island) Eisa Festival at the end of August.

Typically the Eisa team will have the sanshin players and singers, big drummers (that's what I'm practicing), the smaller drums, dancers (female and male dances are slightly different), and then a clown-like character that whips everyone into a frenzy. We feel fortunate to be able to participate as usually women are not allowed to play drums and this is really more of a young man's event - oh, and usually no gaijin.

Where we practice is in an old folk's home and I really enjoy getting to practice in front of them because they get all jazzed up and start clapping and singing and I really feel like I'm participating in a deeper human community. I feel honored to welcome their ancestors for one last dance until they come next year. Even more profoundly, sometimes, I feel trusted, a deep trust that is easy to overlook maybe. Some of these folks can't leave their rooms, so they sit up in their beds and they dance and sing and clap. Maybe they will be the ancestors that will come next year during Obon. On the opposite of the spectrum, though are these little kids running around, also practicing these dances and the cycle is just really moving. That's when I feel the strongest need to show my ki-ai that's what all the shouting is about: it's the bellowing of the living, it's a connecting of the heart and the body and mind in an affirmative SAH and I feel so much more alive and grateful for that gift.

In my confucian studies I've come to understand that truth means something different, perhaps more, in a confucian world. What is true is behaving in a way that is true to those who have come before you (those you learn the Eisa dance from) and behaving in a way that can be trusted by those to come (the kids who watch us and practice what we do). And these practices really deeply resonate with me on this level, I feel like this is the most concrete expression of that definition of performative truth; and I feel more convinced that this is the notion of truth that more people should come to know and express.