akasaka AKANE night

The name Akasaka — “red slope” — comes from the slope that climbed Akaneyama, a hill once thick with akane madder. That colour of the land's memory was revived, literally, as costumes dyed with Japanese akane.

Japanese akane is an ancient colour, said to be the origin of the red in Japan's flag — yet cheap imported dyes drove the technique to extinction, and it is now a “phantom dye”. Using that nearly lost craft, the performers danced in costumes dyed with Japanese akane. Akane is also the colour of “akanesasu”, the pillow-word of the Man'yōshū — the colour of a burning feeling held in the heart.

In the night precinct of Hikawa Shrine, a vast akane-red installation brought the origin of the place's name back into the present, to be felt directly.