Jin Tatsumura

For the past 600 years, while waiting to once again see the light of day, a noh mask has lain hidden away in the treasure house of the Tenkawa Dai-Benzenten Shrine deep in the mountains of Yoshino in Nara Prefecture.

This noh mask, with the name Akobu-jô, was presented to the Tenkawa Shrine by the gifted noh actor and third Kanze school head, Motomasa, after he had with great emotion danced on the Shrine’s noh stage. Just one year later in 1432, it is said that Motomasa, while traveling in Ise, was for some unknown reason assassinated.

In September 2011, a chance for this akobu-jô mask to once again appear on stage came about immediately after the Tenkawa Dai-Benzaiten Shrine had been seriously damaged in the torrential rains that pounded the Kii Peninsula. A request to use the mask came to the chief priest of the Shrine, Mikinosuke Kakisaka, from the National Noh Theatre in Tokyo which was preparing a new noh play called Zeami about Motomasa’s father. However, a noh mask from 600 years ago cannot suddenly be used on stage. Instead, the renowned mask-maker Yasuo Miichi was requested to start the process of restoration.

A noh mask is not simply a mask to be used for the theater. The spirits of many potential noh masks, like the spirit of a tree itself, are hidden in the old tree which has been carefully selected to make the mask. The artisan, while learning the ancient mask forms, brings out the form of the mask to the world by refining his craft and through prayer. As if a ritual of the gods, with each stroke of the mask-maker’s chisel, the spirit of the tree is slowly revealed to the world. When the actor puts the mask on and stands on stage, he is possessed by the “universal mind” which extends beyond time and space into the world of yûgen, a concept in noh which suggests a mysterious, subtle and profound beauty. In “Restoring Akobu-jô,” we attempt to ask what the “true rebirth” is?

In 17th century Italy, there was a gifted violin maker who was able to hear the voice of the “tree spirit.The famous string instruments known as “Strad” and crafted during the 90-year life of Antonio Stradivari have continued to be played and loved by the greatest musicians for over 300 years and are still coveted today by 21st century musicians.

How have these “Strad” continued to last for 300 years as great performance violins?
In 21st century Japan there is one violin-maker who is able to answer that puzzle?
Muneyuki Nakzawa, nicknamed Muni, born in Hyogo prefecture and 72 years old— today’s great performers who own Strad instruments unanimously visit him for repair and adjustment of their beloved instruments.

This is what Nakazawa says.
“A Strad is not simply an instrument. It is an organism with a soul—in other words, a living thing. As a living thing, it too will grow old. Its soul=“tree spirit,” has continued to remember the “sound soul” of all the great performers who have played it over generations. I repair and adjust an instrument with the wish that a new beautiful music will be restored when that memory of an instrument’s “sound soul” encounters the great musicians of the 21st century. Because Stradivarius made each Strad following the voice of the “tree spirit.”

On the day of the March 11th Earthquake and Tsunami, Nakazawa was in his Tokyo studio in the midst of repairing a Strad. In an instant, the work and life of people’s existence was destroyed by an unimaginable cosmic force. Dumbfounded, days of numbness followed as Nakazawa watched the scenes on television. One day a story was introduced on television from the city of Rikuzen Takada telling of a “miraculous pine tree” which survived the tsunami in the midst of a mountain of rubble from the wood of an old farm house which had been destroyed. Nakazawa’s violinist wife Kimiko saw this program and said the following to Nakazawa. “Dad—that isn’t just rubble. Those are pillars and beams of a house which have the memory of living together with people for many years. I wonder if you could use that wood together with that pine tree to make a new violin.”
Nakazawa and his wife have since formed an NPO “The Tree Spirit Group to Connect Lives” giving concerts using the tsunami violin and a Stradivarius.
They too are people who can hear the “Song of the Tree Spirit.”

Hatakeyama began a movement to reforest Mt. Murone in 1989 after being the first to notice that the reason that the blue sea of Kesennuma Bay had begun turning red in the midst of Japan’s industrial growth period was due to the destruction of the forests on Mt. Murone.
Why do people of the sea begin a mountain reforestation project?”

Due to his reforestation activity known as “The forest longs for the sea” which exposed this situation with Hatakeyama’s perceptive eye, Kesennuma Bay gradually became blue again, and was even praised by a French oyster aquaculturalist who said, “This sea is heaven for oysters.” But with the March 11th tsunami, Kesennuma Bay was attacked and Hatakeyama’s oyster beds were completely destroyed. Losing his own beloved mother, Hatakeyama himself barely escaped to high ground with his own life while hugging a grandchild. His losses were over several hundred million yen as all living things in the sea disappeared. From that hopelessness, Hatakeyama said the following. “Both heaven and hell coexist in this sea. That is what nature is.”

About a month after the great tsunami, one day Hatakeyama’s grandchild came running back from the sea and cried out, “Grandpa, there are a whole bunch of little fish swimming in the sea.” As a test, when Hatakeyama put a few remaining young oysters and scallops into the sea, they grew twice as fast compared to before the tsunami. Kesennuma Bay, under its own power had begun an astounding recovery.

Why 25 years earlier was Hatakeyama able to notice that the destruction of the forests was the reason for the dirtying of the sea? The background to that is the gentle fusion of the Japanese view of nature passed down from the ancient Jomon period with the intellect of contemporary science. Seoritsu-hime, the goddess revered in the Murone Shrine on Mt. Murone, is a Jomon goddess which is said to purify the inevitable impurities of human life with the mountain’s river rapids, and then deliver healthy and fresh water to the sea. From childhood, Hatakeyama participated in this festival and must have unconsciously felt the bonds between the forest, the river and the sea. As a youth, he learned to manipulate the oars on his father’s Japanese-style boat and gained through his body the wisdom of sea people, and then later through contemporary science, came to understand scientifically the reasons for pollution of the sea.  And that no doubt is what came to fruition in the “The forest  longs for the sea ” activity.

The Murone Shrine holds its Great Festival every four years. In this festival, the people of the sea collect sea water before dawn and carry it to the Murone Shrine to purify the goddess. Only after that does the festival begin. In 2013, the Great Festival was held for the first time after the Earthquake and Tsunami and Hatakeyama had a major role in the festival. The climax of the festival depicts Hatakeyama’s recovery of  the soul and the recovery of the sea.