Matsuri! Japanese Festival Arts (review)

The entrance to Matsuri! Japanese Festival Arts exudes a calmness and serenity that many visitors might associate with a typical Japanese environment. Dim lights, cool air, and a minimalist display—a pair of hand-painted folding screens and a large torii, or "shrine gate"—evoke the tranquility of a Shinto shrine or the precise aesthetics of a Japanese teahouse. As one moves deeper into the exhibit, however, a frenzied beat of gongs and taiko drums begins to sound, and the bright, vivid colors of festival jackets, robes, and banners spring to life—inviting one into the "joyously chaotic" world of matsuri. Shinto festivals performed by many local communities throughout Japan, matsuri (literally, "to offer worship") delight and astonish the deities with an explosion of visual arts, music, and dance, in order to ensure health and prosperity in the future. Guest curator and art historian Gloria Granz Gonick, who spent more than ten years documenting matsuri in Japan, uses an ethnographic approach that allows visitors to experience—as much as is possible in a museum gallery—the lively, energetic atmosphere of Japanese festival. Although the exhibit focuses on the central role of visual arts in communicating with the gods and reinforcing community cohesion, it also addresses the structure and aesthetics of matsuri as a whole. The floor plan follows the natural movement of a typical festival, which would begin in the quiet space of a shrine, build up to the exuberant parading of the mikoshi (or "palanquin of the gods"), and conclude with the more structured dances and theater performances—enacting a transition, the label text explains, from disorder and "disruptive behavior" to "orderly behavior and ritual renewal." Additional sections explore the influence of festival arts on classical Japanese theater, such as Noh and Kabuki, and the elaborately painted and quilted coats displayed by firefighting troops during many matsuri.

Contextualizing artifacts poses a challenge for any cultural exhibit, but especially when the context is as full of motion and vitality as festival. While some 240 objects—predominately textiles such as festival coats, kimonos, and other costumes—capture the eye with their beauty, Matsuri! simultaneously examines how these elements contribute to a dynamic, meaningful performance. The exhibit paints a complex, cohesive picture of matsuri through ethnographically oriented labels, extensive video footage, color photos, and artful life-sized dioramas—encouraging viewers to not only appreciate the artistry of the objects, but also to understand their connection to the people who create and use them. Screening three videos throughout the gallery, Matsuri! Japanese Festival Arts exemplifies how ethnographic footage can effectively compensate for the limitations of objects alone. Visitors witness the impact of paraders clad in identical coats, chanting to the beat of gongs and drums, sweating as they carry the mikoshi through the streets, and fanning themselves in the summer heat. The second video contrasts the frenetic energy of the procession with the more controlled, staged performances that typically follow, such as the shika mai ("deer dance") designed to appease the spirits. These excerpts help visitors to visualize not only the sequence of a matsuri, but also how participants use the artifacts in context and how different genres are intertwined rather than separate and distinct. Whereas the exhibit features many textiles from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the videos—filmed in the 1990s—assert that matsuri is still widely practiced in Japan as well as in the United States. (The last film examines a matsuri held in downtown Los Angeles every year.) Finally, the videos allow access to...