After the Festival - A Night of God and Dance on Sado Island (ca. 1973)

After the Festival - A Night of God and Dance on Sado Island (ca. 1973)

This film depicts a Noh dedication festival on Sado Island around 1973. When the dance in front of the god was over for the night, the audience had already left, and the god's master had begun to clean up the stage by himself. An old man comes down from the mountain and mutters to himself, "I guess the god has already gone home. The end of the festival is accompanied by the sense that the gods are leaving, and a delicate sensitivity oozes as if we are witnessing the moment when sacred time and everyday life intersect. The 1970s was a time of urbanization and modernization, and these folk beliefs and festivals were gradually disappearing. This scene, recorded amidst such circumstances, quietly illuminates the intimate distance between gods and people, and the vernacular world of prayer and daily life. God is not something that exists in the distance, but is a being that appears here and now through dances and voices, and then returns to the darkness.