Kari Grohn's Home Page - Japan - Momijimatsuri

Karyobin - Dance of Kalavinka Birds 迦 陵 頻 伽

Two boys in orange costume wear wings and flowery crowns. They perform "Karyobin", a program of gagaku, that is, a dance of kalavinka, an imaginary bird. Their little cymbals imitate the kalavinka’s timbre. This magic bird appeared when Buddha attained enlightenment. The Lotus Sutra reads "Sage lord, heavenly being among heavenly beings, voiced like the kalavinka bird, you who pity and comfort living beings, we now pay you honour and reverence." The kalavinka start singing even before leaving its shell and live in Amida's Pure Land of Perfect Bliss. Buddhist art depicts the kalavinka as having the body of a bird and a human head.

Okinawan Bingata Kimono

During the Ryukyuan Dynasty only members of the royal family and upper class were allowed to wear bingata kimono. Women of the higher classes kept their stencil patterns to ensure no other woman could copy her. Dyeing colours for bingata are taken from local vegetables like indigo plant, fukugi tree, hibiscus and garcinias. These dyes are combined with vermilion, dark red, orpiment, lampblack, and ultramarine pigments. Designs are applied to fabrics with stencils and a dye-resistant paste or by designing free-hand with the paste in tubes.

Komusoh Zen Monk

Komusoh monks are nothingness or emptiness priests of the Fuke sect who wear a sedge hood hiding their faces. When someone needed a komusoh to play a shakuhachi bamboo flute for healing, the patient would see only the flute extending from the bottom of the basket. As selfless, empty vessels, other people's problems could be "poured" into them. During the Muromachi era these beggar monks were called priests of a half-way of the world. In the Edo period only komusoh monks were permitted to play shakuhachi at funeral services, when begging, and as a form of meditation. A masterless samurai (ronin) could also obtain komusoh priesthood. Then he wandered about countries as a mendicant priest likening shakuhachi to a sword. 

The shakuhachi is the only melodic instrument used for meditation. When you simply sit in meditation, it's called sitting meditation (zazen), and when you play shakuhachi to meditate, it's called blowing meditation (suizen). The idea of suizen is to become one with the music so that you experience no other distractions, worries, problems, illnesses, or stresses. Ichi no jobutsu is a popular epithet suggesting that enlightenment can be attained through simply playing the single tone.