What’s In a Dance? Part 5

This is more of an ozashiki “trick” than dance, but because it does involve a song and dance kata, it is technically a dance (and a very fun one too) ^^

Kin No Shachihoko (金の鯱) - The Golden Shachihoko

Image courtesy of Kei Meigiren. Now, it may seem odd to be using an image of a Nagoya maiko, but after reading the lyrics the meaning will become clearer ^^

Lyrics

Mitaka? 見たか? Did you see? Kiitaka? 聞いたか? Did you hear? Nagoya no Shiro wa, 名古屋の城は, Of Nagoya Castle, Gojū yagura no zetchō ni, 五重やぐらの絶頂に, On the peak of the five point tower, Kin no Shachihoko, 金の鯱, A golden Shachihoko, Shachihoko, 鯱, And another Shachihoko, Amazarashi. 雨ざらし. Are out in the rain.

The Breakdown

As can be surmised, this song is about these absolutely massive statues (almost 3m tall) that sit atop the highest part of Nagoya Castle in Nagoya. The Shachihoko are golden fish with the head of a tiger that are said to bring good luck and protection to Nagoya Castle which, to be fair, they have as they’ve been there since 1612. Translating the fourth line about the peaks was a bit difficult as you need to see what Nagoya Castle looks like (here’s an example) in order to fully understand it (or just have some nice back story, like here!). Nagoya Castle has five storeys, and for each storey, starting from the second, there is roofing on the outside of the castle. It forms an almost pyramid-like shape with each storey becoming smaller and smaller the higher up you go. On the fifth and final storey sits two Shachihoko, one on each end facing each other; this is why the song mentions two of them. The last line is sung once the dancer is in the iconic Shachihoko pose as a way to make sure that she holds the pose long enough for it to be said.

Since Shachihoko is a Japanese word with no English equivalent I left it in the translation as-is. Even though this song is about statues in Nagoya it is still performed at ozashiki in the Kyoto gokagai as there are various other castles in Japan that have the Shachihoko on them. It’s also a show of how flexible maiko and geiko can be as the signature Shachihoko pose takes a great deal of upper arm strength to pull off. Within Kyoto it is said that the Tama (多麻) okiya of Gion Kobu takes pride in the fact that all of their maiko and geiko can perform Kin No Shachihoko, regardless of their seniority ^^

Each Kagai’s Version

This is a bit of an oddity as this dance isn’t a “strict” part of each dance school’s repertoire, but it’s so popular at ozashiki that it’s performed regardless of these constraints. The song and the dance are the same in all kagai, so the following examples are just to show what it looks like!

Maiko and Geiko Version - Pontocho (先斗町) You may have noticed that before the classic Shachihoko pose is made, maiko Ichiemi (市笑) of Tanmika (丹美賀) and geiko Ichisayo (市さよ) were slipping something over their arms. These are bands that help to keep the arms in the correct position so that their body weight can be balanced. This is actually a pretty common thing to do as the Shachihoko pose is far harder to do than you’d think! Geiko Version - Gion Kobu (祇園甲部) Here we have an unassisted (no band) version done by geiko Mamechiho (豆ちほ) of Ninben (亻). She deserves all of the applause and cheers for having such strength!  Bonus - Nagoya (名古屋) Version! In true Nagoya fashion, this version is done with the final pose being a competition to see who can hold it the longest. Maiko Hikono (ひこ乃) and Kei (京) and geiko Kohana (小華) show off Nagoya’s signature dance (with some added ozashiki fun) ^^ ______________________________________________________________________ The lyrics provided were translated by myself and gathered from multiple sources; I began with a set that a friend had listed, compared it to two other sets (this was one of them), and figured out which made the most sense when written out as some versions just wrote the hiragana versions of a few kanji and it made the meanings a bit more ambiguous to people who are not fluent in Japanese. In the original version some older forms of common kanji were used so I updated them as this may also confuse people.