I have an honor to be here in Venezia, to talk, at first, about a maritime circumstance of Ryukyu state ritual, especially, a state sailing pilgrimage ritual in a sacred maritime landscape of the East (Agari-kata), having been executed until 1673, with the presence of the King and his supreme state priestess of Kingdom, Kikoe-Okimi.
Secondly, my presentation is concerned with memories of the real pilgrimage sequences along the route, however after 1677, represented by the Illusionistic descriptions of the route by ritual songs, performed in a sanctuary commanding the view of the original route, in an enthronement rite (O-ara-ori) of the Supreme priestess. King and his priestess used to execute it, only since 1677, after the abolishment of their pilgrimage in the East, exclusively in a state sanctuary (Utaki) of Seifa on the eastern extremity of the Chinen Peninsula, from where we could perceive Kudaka Island in the East.
In 1875, the last state priestess under the reign of Kingdom executed the tenth O-ara-ori rite there. In the following years, a researcher of the royal ritual music, succeeded in recording several songs by interviewing principal female participants in the last O-ara-ori rite still alive at that time. Among them, we could notice a song, entitled “Kudaka Island”, representing the departure of the sailing towards the Island. This is a case of replacing the real sailing process by its illusion or allusion by ritual songs. We could observe another similar example in a famous initiation rite for the women of Kudaka Island, Izaiho, suspended since 1978.
Thirdly, I will deal with another illusionistic summing up performance of different ritual songs, each one having respectively a different ritual motif and circumstance that we could observe in an occasion of a rice-harvest administrative ritual executed in the Royal Place of Shuri Castle. The 22nd volume of Omoro-Soushi recorded the songs, and the copy of manuals to prepare and to execute the rite, edited in the beginning of the 19th century, fortunately remains in the Archive of the Prefecture College of Art. In this case, eight male singers directed by Omoro-Nushitori, without any presence of royal priestesses, sang the songs in spite of their literal presence clearly described in the phrases of ritual songs.
This suppression of the presence of royal lady-priestesses from the royal festive scenes in the Royal Court (Unaa) had been accentuated all through the ages of State Ritual Reform. Two major personalities directed the policy: a Pro-Japanist Prince Haneji Choshu and the pro-Sinoist Chancellor Sai-on, during the second half of the 17th century for the former and the first half of the 18th century for the latter.
