Mononoke Dance

This is Denki Groove’s recent music video, “Mononoke Dance”. Denki Groove is a band who released their first album in 1990. They are the key band bridging the Technopop and club music. Key member Takkyu Ishino has been working on his somewhat more techno styled solo albums in recent years so proper Denki Groove releases have been rare in the last few years.

The video features traditional Japanese folklore monsters called Yakoi. While it has nothing to do with Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke” because “Mononoke” just means “ghost”, the song does directly connect with the popular anime and manga series “GeGeGe no Kitaro”. Kitaro is the little one eyed boy from the graveyard who’s just been adapted for the sixth time as an anime series. This is the theme song to the latest incarnation “Hakaba Kitaro”, which tries to follow the original 1959 manga series by Shigeru Mura more closely than the many prior adaptations.

This music video doesn’t contain actual visual material from the series itself as far as I can identify (something that is often done for various reasons). What’s being emulated seems to be a vintage illustration style and stick puppets that I understand were once very popular kids entertainment that I guess TV anime did away with. It seems a performers would go around to neighborhoods with a small wood and paper box-like stage put on a free one man storytelling show for the kids with voices and little puppets. His income would be selling traditional sweets or snacks that surely were a requirement for the full experience.

Nick Kent is a New York based artist who works with electronic media and is an occasional pop culture pundit.