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Dance

    Japanese traditional dance, which emerged in ancient times as an element of religious ceremony, has developed over the centuries in close conjunction with various genres of vocal and theatrical art. Japanese dance has traditionally been divided into mai, generally distinguished by a restrained, ceremonial quality, and odori, characterized by a more earthy, extroverted type of movement.
 

Origins
    Mai, which literally means "revolving," is said to have its origin in the movements of shrine maidens, who circled a ceremonial site holding sprigs of the sacred sakaki tree and bamboo in a ritual intended to bring tranquillity and well-being to the land. In time, as this ritual was repeated, the actions and gestures by which the priestess signified divine possession were formalized and evolved into a ritual dance performed on stage by a priestess holding a fan. This, in turn, developed into the art of noh. Like the ritual movements from which they evolved, noh and other mai dance genres generally take the form of one or two performers circling the stage holding a fan or similar prop in this manner.
    Odori, which literally means "jumping," traces its lineage to certain sects of the Jodo (Pure Land) sect of Buddhism that spread rapidly among the common people in the medieval period. The Jodo sect emphasized the repeated chanting of a simple prayer (nenbutsu) by groups of followers, who sometimes jumped about to the rhythm of the accompanying bell in a primitive kind of dance called nenbutsu odori. Until the development of kabuki in the Edo period, all odori was essentially this type of group dancing, the participants keeping time to the music with little regard for symbolic or literary meaning. Vestiges of this type of dancing can be seen today in the bon odori folk dance of each region.
 

Development of kabuki dance
    Kabuki dance was originally classified as odori, since it drew on the nenbutsu odori and used popular songs for accompaniment. It is said to have begun in the early seventeenth century with the Kyoto performances of a troupe of female dancers led by an attendant at Izumo Shrine. After 1629, however, kabuki featuring female performers was forbidden by a government edict aimed at preserving public morals. Kabuki then came to be performed by young boys and subsequently--when the government forbade this too--by adult males. As kabuki dance developed, this odori form gradually incorporated elements of such mai genres as kusemai, or recitative dance, and various noh and kyogen forms. At the same time it came to revolve around a dramatic plot and assumed the theatrical form we are familiar with today.
    The term Nihon buyo, or Japanese classical dance, generally refers to kabuki dance and its derivatives, as distinct from the ancient and medieval genres. Today there are upwards of 150 schools of classical dance that transmit from generation to generation the artistic styles of accomplished kabuki actors and dancers that emerged in each era.

Recent trends
    In recent years Japanese choreographers have composed a number of adaptations of Western works, including Faust and Carmen, combining techniques of Japanese classical dance with those of Western dance. Though such efforts are still in the experimental stage, they have begun to liberate female dancers in particular from the rigid restraints on expression imposed by traditional Japanese dance, introducing a bolder, more expansive kind of movement. Western dance, which is widely studied and performed in Japan, has not only influenced but also been influenced by Japanese classical dance. Examples include The Kabuki, a ballet version of the kabuki classic Kanadehon Chushingura by Maurice Bejart of the Bejart Ballet Lausanne, and flamenco adaptations of such standards of the kabuki repertoire as Dojoji and Sagimusume.

Modern dance
    The history of modern dance in Japan dates back to 1912, when the Teikoku Gekijo (Imperial Theater) invited an opera director and dance instructor from the United Kingdom to teach in Japan. Among the instructor's students, a few went on to form the nucleus of modern dance in Japan. Buto, Japan's original contribution to modern dance, emerged in the 1960s and now enjoys considerable popularity in North America and Europe. Founded by Hijikata Tatsumi, the innovative genre is carried on today by such dance troupes as Sankaijuku and by Ono Kazuo.