Bugaku dancers

This handscroll, one of the museum's oldest and rarest Japanese paintings, highlights the importance of ritual and dance in Japan. Painted by a musician in the imperial household, it was intended to serve as a secret record of the costumes and masks used for eleven different Bugaku dance roles. Bugaku is a refined and precise court dance performed to orchestral music, most frequently in Shinto shrines. The dances often depict encounters with divine or mythological creatures. One of the oldest performance traditions in Japan, Bugaku dates back to the time that Buddhism was brought into Japan. Its masks, costumes, and dances are based on ancient Korean and Chinese prototypes that have died out on the mainland.