Wajima Taisai Festival!

*whoosh*

That's the sound of me blowing the dust off this blog.  Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives, and so is my time here in Japan.  As I rapidly approach one full year of being here, I look back on this blog and feel ashamed at how little I've put up on it.  The usual excuses come up, too much to document and too little time, as well as Facebook becoming more of a central place to post pictures and updates.  But I'm going to try to go at this thing with renewed vigor, which means going back over the last 12 months and trying to recap some of the more memorable things that have gone down here.  Starting with the very beginning....

I have had the following blog post sitting in my draft box since last August, about 75% complete.  It's about my town's big summer festival.  Since this festival is happening again this upcoming weekend, I figure it's probably time to call this one done and put it up.  So let's step in the old way back machine, to August 2009, and....

WAJIMA TAISAI!

For the past 4 days and nights, my quaint little fishing village (Wajima City, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan) was turned completely upside down as people poured in from all over to celebrate one of the biggest festivals on the Noto Peninsula.

Hot-Ishikawa.com describes it as thus:

10 meter tall festival lanterns called Kiriko as well as smaller portable paper lanterns are carried through the town streets along with portable shrines called 'omikoshi'. At the festival climax, a special bonfire by the sea is lit, and Gohei (decorative strips of white paper used in Shinto rituals) that fall from the top are scrambled for by brave men wearing loincloths. It is believed that the person who catches Gohei strips achieves success in everything he does. The giant Kiriko lanterns are indispensable to various festivals celebrated in Noto. Wajima's festival kirikos are especially distinctive because of their famous magnificent Wajima lacquer coatings.

The kiriko in this festival were similar to the ones in the Isaaki Hoto festival I posted about previously, but smaller.  Still plenty heavy though.

From Taisai Blog 2009

The Mikoshi - portable Shinto shrine, serves as a vehicle for the divine spirit during Japanese festivals.  Basically it's like the god's RV.



Opening Ceremony at sunset on Wajima Beach




Each night of the festival takes place in a different neighborhood in Wajima, and each night has a different feel, which is one of the things I enjoyed most about it. The first night was just a warmup, the second two nights were full on insane, and the last night got the kids involved with smaller kiriko for them to carry around as well as a dramatic street battle between a giant fish, the omikoshi shrine thingy mentioned above, and a crazy purple kiriko lantern that tilted in all directions and was festooned with discoballs, tinsel, and purple, yellow, and green strobe lights in a style that could only be described as 'Japanese mardi gras.' (All the other kiriko were pretty traditional wood and rice paper so this one really stood out.)


Kiriko lined up in front of a very serious fellow

On the two craziest nights (Saturday and Sunday), dozens of kiriko teams march their kiriko around the city, racing them at breakneck speeds across bridges and spinning them around insanely in the middle of street intersections.



Once you realize how solid these things are (it takes about 20 guys to lift one), those feats seem much more impressive...and more than just a little bit dangerous, especially when you add the constant threat of the 20 foot tall lanterns hitting power lines or traffic lights. I saw several people come very close to getting flattened during the spinning and the races. Did I mention that people are constantly thrusting 3 liter bottles of sake and shochu (cheap rice wine) in your hand and then cheering as you go bottoms up? Yep. Good times. :)

From Taisai Blog 2009

Taiko drumming is featured prominently throughout the festival. Each kiriko lantern has a drum attached to the base of it, and the drum is constantly manned by a rotating cast of team members. It's pretty awesome, the city really comes alive with the sound of the drums (and flute/bell accompaniment) echoing all over.



 During the festival I found out that the Wajima area is home to some of the best Taiko teams in the country, and from what I saw, I believe it. I still haven't decided whether it's more fun to watch the really really old guys do it or the really really young kids who can barely see over the drum.





 While they are drumming they all get this blissed out expression on their face, just pure enjoyment--it's great.  And contagious, I frequently found myself smiling without even realizing it. I hope to start taking taiko lessons on my own soon, more on that later. Here's a video of some taiko highlights:



The first Taiko performance in that video is from the opening ceremonies on Day 1 on the beach. I don't remember the name of the group, but I remember hearing that they won a national competition last year. The second clip at night is a form of Taiko called Wajima Daiko, and is specific to this area of Japan. I think it started about 500 years ago when villagers tried to scare off invaders by dressing up in ferocious masks wearing seaweed "hair". These guys perform almost every night of the week during the summer for tourists, right outside my apartment.



On the first night of the festival, my co-worker Brian somehow landed us an invitation to join one of the "teams" that runs the kiriko on the second and biggest night.

At first, I was pretty stoked.  And then I thought about it for a bit.  And I started to wonder what he had gotten us into.  7 hours lugging around a 1,000+ lb wooden lantern, all while sake is being generously poured (forced) down my throat? Sounded like a recipe for hospitalization. But I couldn't reject a generous invitation to participate in this thing, not without insulting our host, and I figured that wouldn't be the best way to start off my time in Wajima. So I shook off my doubts and dove in headfirst, and I'm glad I did because it ended up being one of the most memorable nights I've had in Japan so far.


My Kiriko Team


Brian and I showed up at our host's house at 7pm ready to join in the fun. We were loudly welcomed by a crew of maybe 30 or 40 very well-lubricated people, our kiriko team.  Judging by the amount of empty Asahi and sake bottles in the house they had been hitting the sauce hard for most of the day. We were handed our team's signature hapis (traditional robes) and bandanas, then after a couple group photos we hoisted the kiriko onto our shoulders and headed off into the night, marching to the beat of the taiko drum and the trill of the festival flute, launching the kiriko into the air with jubilant shouts of "So-re!"



I would love to give a detailed narrative of the rest of the night, and the rest of the festival --all the different rituals and taiko and dance performances that I witnessed, descriptions of the intricately crafted and decorated kiriko lanterns, but honestly I can't remember half of what I saw, and I couldn't tell you much about what the other half meant because I was just kind of going with the flow and not much was explained to me (not a lot of English speakers 'round these parts.) You'll just have to watch the videos. I can tell you that after the end of the 4th day, I felt like I had been run over by a truck (or several trucks), but it was really the best kind of exhaustion. In addition to overall soreness from kiriko hoisting, I had a large welt on the back of my head that I received during a massive brawl to grab a "lucky" piece of bamboo that are placed on top of the bonfires. Probably should've given the bamboo up a little sooner than I did.




There were a ton of other JETs that came up to Wajima from all over Ishikawa for the festival (I had 8 people sleeping on the floor of my little apartment), and it was a great way to meet a lot of the people that I'd be spending my year here in Japan with.  Nothing forges a friendship quite like a boatload of sake and a crazy summer festival.



The party was not without it's moments of drama and injury.  At one point, I saw a man catch on fire-insert Burning Man joke here-when the big bonfire on the second night fell to the ground a little too early. See the video below for (somewhat graphic) details.



I also saw the head honcho for our kiriko team, our elderly benefactor, fall straight onto his head from about 15 feet up off the ground. He had climbed to the top of our kiriko to secure one of the sacred bamboo poles we had won after the bonfire, and it was pouring down rain, and he was drunk as a skunk. Not a great combo. Slipped on his way down, and even now two months later the thought of it makes me wince. But he was fine! I think. He popped back up onto his feet and wobbled around and found some more sake and nobody seemed too concerned. Can you picture that happening in America? Grandpa does a nose dive onto the pavement and it's no big deal? Yeah. They really are a hardy bunch out here. (In the video below, you can see the old guy placing the bamboo atop the kiriko, right before he fell.)


Bonfire pre-ignition

Oh, yeah, and then there was this guy:



????



MORE VIDEOS:



Day 1 - The opening ceremony down by the beach and nighttime parade with the omikoshi (small portable shrine)



2nd Night - The night Brian and I joined in the festivities. Footage of our crew getting in on some taiko action, as well as the youth group from Wajima (so good!) and at the end video you can see me carrying the kiriko.

Finally, I have some thoughts about festivals.  In my travels, I have had the incredibly good fortune to stumble upon and witness a pretty diverse sampling of annual traditions, festivals, cultural parties, rituals--all of them various forms of human celebration. From the paper mache goblins of Nyepi in Indonesia, to an entire city being transformed by the rainbow colors of Holi in India, to the magical floating lanterns of Loi Krathong in Thailand, as well as various New Years celebrations in Nepal, Japan, and Australia, and Buddha's Birthday in Korea.  Back in the great US of A, there's Mardi Gras, Austin Carnaval (an extension of the Brazilian tradition), and of course Burning Man. While each one of these events has their own distinct color and flavor, sights and sounds, rituals and costumes, and some have been celebrated for 1000+ years and others are relatively brand new, I think that below the surface, underneath the stylized pageantry, they share a lot of fundamental elements.

Take Burning Man, for example.  This incredible arts festival in the desert can be viewed in many different ways, (and sure, not all of them are positive), but from the right angle I think it can be seen as just a modern outlet for a basic human urge that we all have buried somewhere deep down to run around, banging on drums, with painted bodies, wearing ornate costumes, hoisting giant structures on our shoulders, yelling really loudly and lighting stuff on fire. (Getting drunk and naked seem to be an optional part of a lot of these events.) The more I travel, the more I find these things to be surprisingly universal in all types of cultural celebrations.  This is especially true for the 2 most basic and primitive elements of all: fire and the beat of the drum. The Wajima Taisai Festival only confirmed this theory of mine. After all, if the unfailingly polite and conservative people of Japan can get this wild and crazy for 4 nights*, then it surely must be something hardwired into all of us.

* [as intense as Wajima Taisai was, things reportedly get even wilder and crazier during the Abare Matsuri Festival in July (the name translates to Fire and Violence, so that gives you some idea of what's involved) click that link for videos]