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KODO VILLAGE

Since its inception, the founders of Kodo have nurtured a dream of establishing an artistic community in the wild surroundings of Sado. Amongst some of the most beautiful landscape in Japan, the island is a treasure house of Japanese performing arts with a living tradition of drumming, dancing and theatre. Throughout Japanese history, the island has also been a home for exiles, from political prisoners and convicts to the founder of the Noh theatre, and it was here that Kodo laid plans for a haven where Japan's traditional arts could not just be preserved but kept alive and developing.

After more than a decade of living in a converted schoolhouse, the group finally obtained 25 acres of thickly-forested land on the Ogi peninsula in the southern part of the island, and in 1988 the opening ceremony of the village was held. In keeping with Kodo's dedication to preserving traditional arts, the first structure, the main office building, was reassembled from the timbers of a 200 year-old farmhouse that was sheduled for demolition. It has now been extended and includes communal cooking and dining areas as well as a library devoted to world music and dance. Since then, a reception building (also a reassembled farmhouse), a dormitory building, a studio and most recently a magnificent new rehearsal hall have been added. In addition to these main communal buildings, married members of the group have been building family homes on surrounding land.

Looking to the future, Kodo envisions the village as being not just a home base for its touring activites but a centre for a wider range of artistic activites and an essential part of its plans to provide opportunities for artists of the world to meet and understand each other.

      
Kodo Village

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