A while ago I went to a pretty interesting Japanese festival. The festival is called Handa Festival, but actually takes place in Kamesaki ( 亀崎). You can get there in about one hour from Nagoya. I have to say I am lacking details on the history of this festival, but that stuff can be found elsewhere, and elsewhere, and elsewhere so I’ll keep this personal.
During this festival giant “Dashi” are pulled through the town. Most of the festivals I have seen in Japan until now include “omikoshi”, which are like giant portable shrines… Dashi are like Omikoshi, but they are on wheels and are about five times as tall. People can ride inside them, and during this festival, each Dashi has their own song that was being played on drums and Japanese flutes from the inside of the Dashi. I went to the festival with a Japanese friend who grew up in the area. In this particular festival there were five Dashi’s used. I hear that in a larger version of this festival, which only happens once every five years or so, all thirty Dashi’s from around the area are gathered for a special event which takes place in another city. My friend told me that the males from the town are usually assigned to one Dashi group a very young age. As the boys grow older they will move through different tasks associated with the Dashi. The tasks vary between pulling the Dashi with ropes, riding inside the Dashi and playing an instrument, to pushing the dashi from behind or controlling the turns. During a festival all of these roles are important for manipulating the Dashi and giving a good performance. Apparently recently most youth have been picking up and moving to the big cities, so there is a bit of a generation gap forming between the participants. There also seem to be rules so that only families originally from the town can participate in the Dashi related events. Lots of Ojisan.
The main attraction to Handa Matsuri, is that this particular area is the only area in which the Dashi are pulled out into the ocean. The final rush down to the water was very impressive, as as I mentioned, these Dashi are huge and the men really got them moving at good speeds. At times it didn’t even look like they would be able to stop them in time. I heard that once there was an accident where one Dashi was overturned.
Anyway, that’s that. Sorry this is so light on details, but, it was a really was a cool festival! If you’re ever in the Aichi-ken area around golden week, be sure to look it up.
-Harvey
There is actually another matsuri even more famous called Shiohi matsuri. (潮干)
