Noh, Hudhud and tea ceremony
February 5, 2006 | 12:00am
In celebration of the Philippine-Japan Friendship Year 2006, which commemorates the 50th year of the restoration of diplomatic ties between the Philippines and Japan, it is timely to explore the two cultures by enjoying a performance of the two ancient art forms from the two countries — the Noh music drama and the Ifugao Hudhud chants.
Several events have been lined up for the year. For January, the Workshop on Noh and the Taiko! Tambol! Japanese Drum Group Concert were featured. In February, there are the Philippine-Japanese Medical Mission, Nihongo Fiesta-Speech Contest, Japanese Pop Exposition, Friendship Golf, Origami Exhibition, Bondori Dance Festival and Ikebana Exhibition. In March, the Japanese Food Fair and the ASEAN-Japan Workshop on Theater will be the focus.
When UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura chaired the World Heritage Committee just before being appointed head of UNESCO in 1999, he noticed that most of the heritage sites were the royal palaces and architecture of the developed countries. Yet, the developing countries have their rich heritage arts as well, most of which though are intangible.
The notion of intangible heritage did not originally arouse anything like the interest it does today and it remained the preserve of a handful of specialized researchers. Thus, to preserve culture in all its diversity, UNESCO developed an instrument, the 1972 World Heritage Convention, which has been extraordinarily successful.
UNESCO Member States must compile an inventory of their own intangible heritage so as to make them more aware of the treasures they hold. This will make them more attentive in protecting these and the local actors who keep them alive. Submitting the candidature requires highlighting not only the cultural values, but also proposing detailed safeguarding plans. Therefore, inclusion on the list by UNESCO means the country is duty bound to finance this safeguarding plan.
The UNESCO Intangible Heritage Awards were first initiated in the UNESCO 2001 General Conference in Paris. Among 19 awardees were the Ifugao Hudhud Chants and the Nogaku Theater.
The Hudhud is recited and chanted among the Ifugao people – known for their rice terraces – during the sowing and harvesting of rice, funeral wakes and other rituals. Estimated to have originated before the 7th century, the Hudhud, comprised of some 40 episodes, often takes three to four days to recite. The language of the chants, almost impossible to transcribe, is full of repetitions, synonyms, figurative terms and metaphors. They are of value as an anthropological, historical and literary record.
The conversion of the Ifugao to Catholicism weakened their traditional culture. The Hudhud was linked to the manual harvesting of rice, which is now mechanized. It has been replaced at funeral wakes by television and radio. Although the rice terraces are inscribed on the World Heritage List, the number of cultivators continues to decrease. The few people who know all the poems are very old and young people are not interested in this tradition.
Since the rights of indigenous peoples are protected by Philippine law, including their intellectual property, publication of historical and ethnological iconographs is planned. The government also proposes festivals and indigenous ceremonies. The National Library and National Museum are responsible in completing the archive of the Hudhud. A project teaching the tradition to young people is foreseen.
The Nogaku theater dates back to the eighth century and has evolved to incorporate various artistic forms such as acrobatics, song, dance and comic impersonations. Nogaku encompasses two types of theater: the Noh and the Kyôgen.
Noh is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that would later influence other dramatic forms such as Kabuki. The plays, often inspired by traditional literature, incorporate masks, costumes, props and dance. In the Noh, supernatural heroes become human to tell a story. Masks represent ghosts, women, children and old men. Meantime, Kyôgen relies on comic dialogues, for which scripts are written in a medieval oral language.
There are four major categories of Noh performers: Shite (primary actor), Waki (the counterpart or foil of the Shite), Kyogen (performs the aikyogen interludes during plays), and Hayashi (instrumentalists who play the flute, hip-drum or otsuzumi, shoulder-drum or kotsuzumi, and stick-drum).
The major threat to Noh was that interest declined among young people. However, since the Nôgaku was designated an Intangible Cultural Property in 1957 and is thereby protected, along with its traditional artists, the Japanese government provides financial support and training for Nôgaku theater actors. Thus, a system for recording the performances is planned.
Gina de Venecia and I were very much honored to be exclusively invited by Madame Noriko Yamazaki, wife of the Japanese ambassador, to join her and Minister Taeko Takahashi in a special lunch and Japanese tea ceremony. This is one of the highest social tributes that one can receive from a Japanese.
The Japanese tea ceremony is a traditional ritual influenced by Zen Buddhism in which powdered green tea, or matcha, is ceremonially prepared by a skilled practitioner, such as Madame Yamazaki, and served to a small group of guests in a tranquil setting. Madame Yamazaki is the first Japanese ambassador’s wife to hold such special ceremony at the Japanese ambassador’s residence. She spends days going over the minutiae to ensure that the ceremony is perfect. Like Montessori education, the tea ceremony consists of analysis and refinement of movement in silence. It is part of the refinement of education of Japanese women.
"The tea ceremony requires years of training and practice... yet the whole of this art, as to its detail, signifies no more than the making and serving of a cup of tea. The supremely important matter is that the act be performed in the most perfect, most polite, most graceful, most charming manner possible," according to Lafcadio Hearn.
Madame Yamazaki has hosted about eight tea ceremonies already for ambassadors’ wives and special friends during her one year and three months of stay here in Manila, with chef Hiroyuki Fukata preparing the special tea ceremony meal. Chef Fukata has been with the Japanese embassy for the past six years and seven months, having served three consecutive ambassadors: Ambassadors Yoshihisa Ara, Kojiro Takana and now Ryuichiro Yamazaki. He cooks up special Japanese menus for an average 130 to 140 parties a year given by the ambassador.
Several events have been lined up for the year. For January, the Workshop on Noh and the Taiko! Tambol! Japanese Drum Group Concert were featured. In February, there are the Philippine-Japanese Medical Mission, Nihongo Fiesta-Speech Contest, Japanese Pop Exposition, Friendship Golf, Origami Exhibition, Bondori Dance Festival and Ikebana Exhibition. In March, the Japanese Food Fair and the ASEAN-Japan Workshop on Theater will be the focus.
The notion of intangible heritage did not originally arouse anything like the interest it does today and it remained the preserve of a handful of specialized researchers. Thus, to preserve culture in all its diversity, UNESCO developed an instrument, the 1972 World Heritage Convention, which has been extraordinarily successful.
UNESCO Member States must compile an inventory of their own intangible heritage so as to make them more aware of the treasures they hold. This will make them more attentive in protecting these and the local actors who keep them alive. Submitting the candidature requires highlighting not only the cultural values, but also proposing detailed safeguarding plans. Therefore, inclusion on the list by UNESCO means the country is duty bound to finance this safeguarding plan.
The Hudhud is recited and chanted among the Ifugao people – known for their rice terraces – during the sowing and harvesting of rice, funeral wakes and other rituals. Estimated to have originated before the 7th century, the Hudhud, comprised of some 40 episodes, often takes three to four days to recite. The language of the chants, almost impossible to transcribe, is full of repetitions, synonyms, figurative terms and metaphors. They are of value as an anthropological, historical and literary record.
The conversion of the Ifugao to Catholicism weakened their traditional culture. The Hudhud was linked to the manual harvesting of rice, which is now mechanized. It has been replaced at funeral wakes by television and radio. Although the rice terraces are inscribed on the World Heritage List, the number of cultivators continues to decrease. The few people who know all the poems are very old and young people are not interested in this tradition.
Since the rights of indigenous peoples are protected by Philippine law, including their intellectual property, publication of historical and ethnological iconographs is planned. The government also proposes festivals and indigenous ceremonies. The National Library and National Museum are responsible in completing the archive of the Hudhud. A project teaching the tradition to young people is foreseen.
Noh is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that would later influence other dramatic forms such as Kabuki. The plays, often inspired by traditional literature, incorporate masks, costumes, props and dance. In the Noh, supernatural heroes become human to tell a story. Masks represent ghosts, women, children and old men. Meantime, Kyôgen relies on comic dialogues, for which scripts are written in a medieval oral language.
There are four major categories of Noh performers: Shite (primary actor), Waki (the counterpart or foil of the Shite), Kyogen (performs the aikyogen interludes during plays), and Hayashi (instrumentalists who play the flute, hip-drum or otsuzumi, shoulder-drum or kotsuzumi, and stick-drum).
The major threat to Noh was that interest declined among young people. However, since the Nôgaku was designated an Intangible Cultural Property in 1957 and is thereby protected, along with its traditional artists, the Japanese government provides financial support and training for Nôgaku theater actors. Thus, a system for recording the performances is planned.
The Japanese tea ceremony is a traditional ritual influenced by Zen Buddhism in which powdered green tea, or matcha, is ceremonially prepared by a skilled practitioner, such as Madame Yamazaki, and served to a small group of guests in a tranquil setting. Madame Yamazaki is the first Japanese ambassador’s wife to hold such special ceremony at the Japanese ambassador’s residence. She spends days going over the minutiae to ensure that the ceremony is perfect. Like Montessori education, the tea ceremony consists of analysis and refinement of movement in silence. It is part of the refinement of education of Japanese women.
"The tea ceremony requires years of training and practice... yet the whole of this art, as to its detail, signifies no more than the making and serving of a cup of tea. The supremely important matter is that the act be performed in the most perfect, most polite, most graceful, most charming manner possible," according to Lafcadio Hearn.
Madame Yamazaki has hosted about eight tea ceremonies already for ambassadors’ wives and special friends during her one year and three months of stay here in Manila, with chef Hiroyuki Fukata preparing the special tea ceremony meal. Chef Fukata has been with the Japanese embassy for the past six years and seven months, having served three consecutive ambassadors: Ambassadors Yoshihisa Ara, Kojiro Takana and now Ryuichiro Yamazaki. He cooks up special Japanese menus for an average 130 to 140 parties a year given by the ambassador.
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