Yesterday, exactly one year ago, it was a Sunday and in the little town we lived in Japan, called Arakawaoki (which was only famous for it's railway station, which you had to use traveling from Tokyo to the booming science city Tsukuba), the local
matsuri took place. Or more exactly, the matsuri on our side of the railway. The other side's matsuri was a little bit later.
What is a matsuri? It's a kind of festival held in every place in Japan during the summer time. The most famous one is the Gion matsuri in Kyoto. The origin lays in the Shinto religion of Japan. Every place has is own Shinto shrine where the local Kami, the God, lives.
It's the meeting point between the Kami and the people living in his area. But not everyone can go to the Shrine and the Kami can not go into the town. So the idea is to transfer the Kami from the Shrine into a portable Shrine, a mikoshi, and carry him around the town, so that the Kami can have a look and the people can see him. Afterwards the Kami is returned to the Shrine (once we had seen this ceremony in Gion itself. It was amazing).
To make the trip enjoyable for the Kami,
the mikoshi is followed by people making loud music and dancing and the mikoshi itself, carryed by young men and women, is always shaken around while people are shouting loudly. So everyone has a lot of fun and small children and elderly people together participate in this festival.
For us this was always a big event and we joined each year the matsuris around our place. But of course, the one in our hometown was very special for us. Being a foreigner in small Japanese
town is something like being an animal in the zoo. People are very friendly, but also fearing to came too close in contact with us. So it's not so easy if people always starring at you and hold you on distance. But at the day of the matsuri this was different. People were proud that we joined their festival, were happy that we walked with them through our neighborhood. And as usual we were forced to take a lot of pictures, especially of the children :)
So matsuri day was not only for the Kami a happy day, also for us. And when I looked through the pictures yesterday I was a little bit sentimental. Both of us are missing Japan almost everyday. It was a great time in a wonderful country, not always easy, but nowhere live is always easy.
I decided to upload a bunch of pictures which, I hope, carry something of the atmosphere of the matsuri to you. The people dancing on the street, the children with their masks, the young men carrying the mikoshi, the light of the paper lanterns, all that I hope you can see and feel the enthusiasm and joy of the people. On matsuri day you will not find this stereotype of the always controlled and quite Japanese. On that day all social and cultural boundaries are forgotten.
So, enjoy the pictures of that day, I posted here again. It's six new pictures, and an old one, taken on the same day but posted long ago...
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Bigoode - Joe l'trembleur pro says:
really
thanks to explain and share !
it's really interesting.
hope to be able to view this one day
Shine on dear friend
manganite replies:
miichan says:
manganite replies:
Where do you live exactly? I don't know your place.
moritz™ says:
manganite replies:
HarryBo73 says:
Thanks for sharing.
Yesterday I read the National Geographic "The world in 100 old pictures" and there was also a picture about "Hadaka Matsuri", what a coincidence :-)
manganite replies:
I'm planing to wrote more such entries about my pictures from Japan, so people will understand better.