Kawagoe Matsuri in Saitama

Posted on 14. Dec, 2006 @ 2:16 pm by in Culture Views: 705

This happened long ago, apologies I posted it so late!

I went to Kawagoe Matsuri this year in mid October. It is one of the largest festivals in the Kanto area, and is in Kawagoe Saitama. English Wikipedia on Kawagoe here.
Kawagoe is known as “little Edo”, and the town has preserved old buildings in the “kurazukuri” style.

During the festival gigantic floats are taken around the city, and at times they face off with one another and have a musical competition. It is said that the purpose of the competition is to see if the musicians inside of one float can throw the other floats musicians off beat.

Inside the float are dancers in costume, drummers, other bell percussion and a Japanese flute.

You can get a good idea of the size of the floats in this picture.

I love these masks. This one is meant to look like an old man. So is the one directly below this picture (the figure standing on the right, not the guy sitting down! That’s not a mask).

This guy is having a great time. He was so relaxed leaning back in his float keeping the beat on the drum. Of course I didn’t ask, but I’m sure this man is over 70 years old. I hope I am still so Genki when I reach that age.
These float (dashi) kind of reminded me of the floats I saw at Handa Matsuri in Nagoya… Way back in 2004!

- Harvey

  • http://pixelscribbles.com/journal Heather Meadows

    Wow, what a neat concept! I’d never heard of this sort of musical face-off before.

    Are those people standing at the very top, or are they decorations on the float?

  • http://www.japannewbie.comn Harvey

    Actually the two upright figures on the very top are dolls. However see the two dudes crunched over on top? They’re real. They have some kind of role up there to make sure things don’t fall apart!

  • Jordan

    The dashi which feature so prominently in the Kawagoe matsuri are throwbacks to the traditions of matsuri gone by. There were three famous matsuri around Japan that had these kind of carts or modified omikoshi. One of those matsuri was held in Asakusa down the Sumida river from Kawagoe. The reason you see these kind of ‘floats’ in Kawagoe today is because in the past Kawagoe adopted many of the fashions and trends of its bigger sister to the south, Edo. Today, Kawagoe is still called by the nickname it was given centuries ago as a major commericial and shipping center just outside Edo. That nickname is Koedo, or ‘little Edo’. Cheers.

    J

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