Tomohiro Oshima
Longing for Orihime
Longing for Orihime
The Komachi Odori of Nishijin and the Living Memory of a Weaving Town
The act of people gathering to dance in a crowd has, in every age, been inseparable from the land and from the memory of the communities that live upon it. What runs beneath Japan’s folk performing arts is above all an impulse: to move the body together within a single ring in order to ward off calamity, to pray for abundance, to send off the dead, and to let the living confirm one another’s presence. The most resplendent crystallization of that impulse was the furyū dance. In Kyoto’s Nishijin, that spirit lives on in a single delicate blossom — the Komachi odori, danced by girls in Genroku costume around the great Tanabata bamboo.
Bandura
Bandura
To Hold History in the Body
The bandura is a Ukrainian folk instrument. It has a pear-shaped resonating body and a short neck, and modern concert models carry 55 to 65 strings. It has no frets; the open strings are plucked like a harp’s. Its clear, crystalline tone blends naturally with the human voice, and singing to one’s own accompaniment has always been the instrument’s essential form. Photographer Tomohiro Oshima documents Oksana Stepaniuk, a refugee from Ukraine, playing the bandura in Japan — and traces the instrument back to the murdered oral historians who once carried a nation’s memory in their bodies.