Because the Palace is open, they are holding dances every morning this weekend inside the grounds (where they have been traditionally performed) at 10 and 11am. My host mother and I went to see the 10am one, thinking that the performance today was of the Gosechi dances, which were dances held yearly (I believe) at least since the Heian period to commemorate a legend that says that one night the emperor was playing music by himself when a group of heavenly maidens came down to dance for him. Actually, today’s performance was of something called Gagaku, a court dancing style I believe performed only by men that came over from China a very long time ago. That was also very interesting, because everything about it seems very foreign to the traditional arts that I’m used to, though it greatly predates them. After that, my host mother had gotten us tickets to see a house called Reze-ke, which was I believe the home of an imperial princess that has been passed down through many generations from before the Edo period. The house is only open to the public very rarely, and also contains priceless artwork and is a designated cultural property. The current ‘owner’ of the house (because she cannot live there, and the house itself is, I believe, maintained by the government) is actually my host mother’s waka teacher. Much of the house is actually made to facilitate singing and writing poetry, including an unusual interior. To make room for large gatherings, large sections can be opened up so that there is no separation at all between rooms, and because they usually sit in a row to do this, some extremely traditional architectural conventions have been warped. The storehouse of the estate was actually one of the only things to survive the great Edo fire that destroyed the imperial palace and Reze-ke itself, making it one of the oldest buildings in the area. Inside are (apparently) priceless collections of poetry and art that can only be accessed by the house’s owner. After this, my host mother, host sister and I went almost to Gion to a temple that was having a sort of event. Basically, the finest traditional stores in Kyoto were exhibiting their products, with each store having a sort of diorama to decorate. They had everything from traditional candies (Toraya was there, which is only a block from my house) to sushi (real sushi, I don’t know how they did it) to kimono and ceramics, and every booth seemed to be attended by a very elegant-looking person in traditional attire. I couldn’t get over how cultured some of the older women looked in their kimono. At the end we were served tea and a snack Omotesenke school style, and I was able to take a picture with the current head of the Omotesenke school of tea ceremony. When we left we were served soba noodles in broth topped in grated radish by women dressed in a style traditionally worn by country women selling their produce in the city. After that we visited the main temple building and paged through the used book fair going on outside of it, then walked around the corner to a café for lunch. The inside of it really reminded me of the inside of an Irish pub in the daytime, with long wooden tables and benches where several parties were seated, and a relaxed atmosphere.
-While ‘waka’ to most people implies poetry, the words for ‘poem’ and ‘song’ are the same in Japanese (uta), which makes it possible to sing a poem.
-Rezeke’s tatami mats have a pattern on their silk borders that cannot be used in any other place in Japan.
-Rezeke also is one of the only houses that may receive one of the special straw tassels from the main float at the Gion matsuri, which is a good-luck talisman.
-Toraya is coming out with a special collection of Tale of Genji sweets for the novel’s 1000th year anniversary, which depict the different flowers that are used as names for characters and chapters in Genji.
-To show off its prowess, one of the kimono shops had in their display a type of kimono not worn by pretty much anyone today. It was a kosode, which was common dress only until the middle-beginning of the Edo period, and afterward was only used in the Imperial court.
-There are two major schools of Tea Ceremony in Kyoto (maybe Japan as a whole, I’m not certain): the Urasenke and the Omotesenke schools, both of which descend from the founder of tea ceremony as it is known today, Sen no Rikyu.
-Omotesenke tea is less foamy then Urasenke tea.
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