NEW YORK-The fourth of July is over and the fireworks are gone, but a celebration on a more mythical scale took place yesterday.
Dressed in colorful traditional costumes, actors portraying a princess, a cow herder, and a king made their way across the lobby of Japan Society depicting a scene from Japanese legends. Under a colorful fabric-draped ceiling, stories and customs from a yearly celebration known as the Star Festival were relayed to an audience of mostly children and parents.
The show tells of a story of two lovers—a princess who weaved beautiful pieces of cloth by the Milky Way and a cow herder. The two fell in love but wound up neglecting their duties. The King of Heaven then separated the two lovers on separate sides of the Milky Way and only permitted them to meet once a year on "the seventh day of the seventh month."
The show's director Eriko Ogawa has been producing children's shows for the past three years in New York City before it was picked up by Japan Society and allocated a spot in the society's yearly schedule. Originating from Tokyo, Ogawa and her crew produce numerous theatrical performances that retell traditional Japanese tales.
"I really like these stories," says Ogawa. "I wanted to introduce the story to the children who don't know much about Japanese culture because they live far away [in New York City]."
In the past, Ogawa produced numerous theatrical performances retelling stories such as the classical inspirational tale "Sadako and One Thousand Cranes." The story tells of a young girl who spends her days inside a hospital after developing leukemia caused by radiation by the bombing of Hiroshima in post World War Two Japan. While in the hospital, she begins folding 1,000 paper cranes which purportedly can grant her one wish which was simply to live.
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