Digital renovation and archives of japanese ancient ritual performance at the world cultural heritage; niutsuhime shrine

Abstract

A cultural heritage system about Japanese historical religious ritual called Bugaku Mandala-ku has been developed. It includes digital contents of historical religious site and buildings as well as performances played on it with 3DCG animation. Bugaku Mandala-ku is a religious ritual to pray for national prosperity and a good harvest. This is one of the rare and special cases of syncretism of the Japanese native nature worship Shinto with imported religion Buddhism, and it has not been held for more than 170 years since the late Edo period. The scene of Bugaku Mandala-ku was described in detail in the drawing called Sogon-zu, in which the shape of the stage, position and motion of the performers, and rough scenarios of the Shinto ritual were shown. By referencing these drawings and information provided by the shrine, the precinct of the shrine in the Edo period has been reconstructed with 3DCG. The details of the Bugaku stage has been obtained by referencing the stage which has currently been used, to reconstruct the stage. Since Bugaku performance has been still inherited by some small national and private cultural organizations, the performer’s body motion was able to be captured with a motion capture system, in order to make the 3DCG character animation. Combining these information, recreation of the CG character’s performance on the Bugaku stage situated in the shrine precinct was made possible. Introduction of VR technology into the system and its use as an educational interactive media has also been planned, for helping young people to understand this precious and special Japanese historical intangible properties.