This dissertation explores WASHINOMIYA SAIBARA KAGURA as a communication site where religious beliefs, values, and ways of life are interwoven with human expression. The kagura is one of the oldest forms of Shinto folk performing arts. Performed as part of local religious festivals at Washinomiya Shrine, the kagura evokes its powerful symbols to effectuate shamanic and magical efficacy, as well as to provide entertainment to both human and divine audiences. The existing studies tend to describe the kagura as "a text in motion" and to explain it as a functional and purposive behavior, but without exploring the very act of "expressing the kami (deities)." The present dissertation, therefore, relies on fieldwork centered on WASHINOMIYA SAIBARA KAGURA in order to challenge the currently rationalized understandings of a symbol-filled religious expression and to explicate the very act of expressing the kami. More specifically, I take the following two approaches: (1) a phenomenological approach that enables us to disclose what kinds of and levels of experience are required to express the kami, and (2) a Gebserian approach that allows us to reveal how multidimensional modes of awareness co-constitute the act of expressing the kami. The task is threefold: (a) to offer a detailed description of WASHINOMIYA SAIBARA KAGURA, (b) to elucidate how the kami and their corresponding expressions are shared and transmitted among the kagura performers, and (c) to unfold the kagura (expressing the kami) in various modes of awareness, freeing it from the single, unidimensional explanations offered to date
