Article: The Gods Come Dancing: A Study of the Japanese Ritual Dance of Yamabushi Kagura.

Dance, "read like a rich and informative cultural text" (258), forms the fundamental basis for Irit Averbuch's profound research into a certain form of yamabushi kagura in the mountainous part of Honshu in northern Japan. Kagura, the most ancient of Japanese performing arts, is widely spread over the country as a part of ritual performance in Shinto shrines. Generally classified as folk performing art, it is further divided in two large categories: the mikagura (performed in the imperial palace and shrines related to it) and sato-kagura (performed in the countryside). This study is mainly concerned with the latter, and concentrates primarily on the Dake school (ryu) of ...