Karatsu Kunchi Hikiyama

 

Karatsu Kunchi is the main festival of the coastal castle town of Karatsu on the coast of Saga in northern Kyushu.

It takes place on November 2nd, 3rd, and 4th every year and features a parade of giant floats called hikiyama.

Many of the famous matsuris in Japan feature giant floats, and unique styles have been developed.

All the floats in Karatsu date back to the early to mid 19th century, and 14 of the original 15 are still used.

The floats are between 5 to 6 meters in height and weighing between 2 and 5 tons, with each one created by and representing the 15 different districts that make up the town.

The floats are started with a wooden framework which is then built up upon with sometimes clay, sometimes linen, and sometimes Japanese paper. This is then lacquered and finished with gold leaf..

All manner of creatures, mostly mythical, are represented, with lions being quite popular, but also dragons, phoenix, and turtle. Perhaps the most unusual design are the kabuto, or samurai helmets, with the kabutos of the great samurai Raiko  Minamoto, Kenshin Uesugi, Shingen Takeda, and Yoshitsune Monamoto.

If you can't visit the festival, the floats are displayed throughout the year in an exhibition hall. These photos were taken when I visited and the hall was located directly next to Karatsu Shrine, but a new hall has now been built close to the main JR station of the town.

The previous post was on Karatsu Shrine, the origin and home of the Karatsu Kunchi.

Dance of the Herons Sagimai in Tsuwano

 

Sagimai, the Dance of the Herons, is an elegant,  medieval dance that originates in the Gion Matsuri, the Kyoto festival that is  the most famous of all festivals in Japan.

The best place to see it is in the former castle town of Tsuwano in the mountains of western Shimane close to the border with Yamaguchi, where the dance has been kept alive for more than four centuries after it disappeared from Kyoto.

Two male dancers dressed as herons, one male, one female, perform a kind of mating dance, and while the two "birds" are the stars of the show, there are plenty of other characters in the performance.

Two dancers called bofuri, wearing bright red wigs and carrying long rods slowly circle the two herons, twirling the rods to keep the space free from evil spirits. One bofuri moves clockwise, the other anti-clockwise.

The Toya, festival head, with some guards. Historically a hereditary position of the influential Hori family, the position of Toya is nowadays rotated among parishioners of the Yasaka Shrine.

The remaining halberds, or kasaboko. Originally 13, one for each month plus the largest for the whole year. Because of depopulation, there are no longer enough people to carry the halberds so they are left on display at the community center where the dance begins.

The dance takes place at several locations along Tonomachi, a street of preserved historical buildings from the Edo Period. All the dancers and musicians have their own "guards" as they walk the short distance. The crowd, never that big, usually accompanies the procession to the next venue.

While the herons are dancing, and the bofuri are circling, another pair of dancers called kakko mai are dancing. Kakko is the name of the small drum attached to their waists which they don't actually play. Their movement do not mimic, but is synchronized with, that of the herons.

Behind the kakko mai, the musicians playing flute, cymbal, and drums sit or squat, and behind them stand the singers.

The dance takes place on July 20th and 27th, the start and end days of the Gion Matsuri in Tsuwano. It was probably introduced from nearby Yamaguchi in 1542. The Ouchi Clan who ruled much of western Japan had introduced a lot of culture and tradition from Kyoto including the sagimai.

It stopped being performed in Kyoto during the time of the Onin War in the 15th century when Kyoto was a smoldering ruin and the dance died out there. Later it also died out in Yamaguchi, leaving Tsuwano as the only site in Japan where the dance continued until modern times.

In the late 20th century the people of Tsuwano took the sagimai back to Kyoto and taught them the details. Nowadays it can be seen at Yasaka Shrine in Gion, though it would be best to be in possession of a powerful telephoto lense if you want to see much of anything.......

In 1958 Tsuwano created the Kosagi Odori, literally the Heron Chick Dance, as way to get the towns children involved , and it has now become a feature of the festival every year.

Young boys have recently taken part in the Chick Dance, a result of the dwindling population. In a similar vein, women have started to take part in the main Sagi Mai, though so far only as guards of the procession.

One final note,.... Herons are quite a few species of different birds, with the one represented in the sagimai most likely a Little Egret. There are several egret species in Japan, all white. What I would call a heron is the Grey Heron, called Ao Sagi, blue heron in Japanese, and the egret is shira sagi, white heron.

Yodohime Shrine Shimenawa & Yamodo Festival

 

When I saw the shimenawa on the torii to Yodohime Shrine I knew it was unusual, but only when I did the research for this post did I realize its significance. The very small, local shrine lies at the border of Matsubara and Yamine, in the mountains north of Sasebo, Nagasaki. The shrine was established in the first years of the 11th century and enshrines Toyotamahime, the grandmother of the mythical first emperor Jimmu who features in the Hyuga Myth Cycle.

The Yamodo Matsuri takes place every new year, now set as the end of January, and culminates in the shimenawa being replaced with a new one, made by the parishioners out of rice straw from the previous harvest. Yamodo is derived from yama udo which means mountain man and refers to a kind of marebito, an idea of an outsider as a god from another world. In this case it refers to the Yamanokami that descends from the mountains in the Spring to become the Tanokami, god of the rice paddies, during the summer and then returns to the mountains after the harvest.

In the Yamodo festival 2 young men, one from each village, whose parents are still living and healthy, undergo various purifications and then act as the yama udo in various ways during the festival. The festival is now registered as an Intangible Cultural property of the prefecture.

There is a 23-minute video on the matsuri, in Japanese, on YouTube, if you are interested. The previous post was on Saifukuji Temple and its cave.

Nagasaki Shinchi the Oldest Chinatown in Japan

 

By the 17th century there were Chinese settlements all over Kyushu engaged in trade. In 1635 the Japanese government restricted all trade to the single port of Nagasaki, and so the Chinese moved there.

It is thought that around one sixth of the population of Nagasaki were Chinese, but they were not confined like the Dutch traders on Dejima.

However, by the late 17th century the Shogunate became increasingly concerned about smuggling and so a walled and gated  compound called Tojin Yashiki was constructed and all Chinese confined there.

In 1859 the Japanese policy of national seclusion ended and Tojin Yashiki was demolished and many of the Chinese residents moved to the Shinchi area.

For two weeks after the Chinese New Year the Nagasaki lantern Festival is held is held at several sites across Nagasaki, including Shinchi.

I visited a few days after it had finished but floats and other evidence of the festival still remained.

I did not spend any time exploring Shinchi as I was far more interested in the nearby area of the former Tojin Yashiki. The previous post in this series was on Dejima, the Dutch settlement.

Hita Gion Matsuri Museum

Hita Gion Matsuri Museum

Hita, the historic town in the mountains of Oita, is one of many towns throughout Japan with their own Gion Matsuri, the festival that originated in Gion, Kyoto.

The festival takes place at the end of July, but for those who visit at other times there is a museum that displays the large festival floats throughout the year.

Like many matsuri, the Gion Matsuri involves a series of floats, and they are called Yamaboko because of how tall they are.

Hita has six different yamaboko, each one pulled by a different district of the town, and they are 8 meters tall and very colorfully decorated.

As well as the floats the museum also displays other things from the festival culture,  like masks

I arrived at the museum just after it closed but a gentleman from city hall nagged the old lady in charge to let me in for my own private viewing.

Yatsushiro Myokensai

Yatsushiro

I arrived at Yatsushiro Shrine in late November on the 44th day of my first walk around Kyushu. A few days earlier was the Yatsushiro Myokensai Festival which originates from the shrine. On display at the shrine are some of the "creatures" that are paraded during the festival.

It is one of the major festivals of Kyushu and one of the 33 festivals that are registered as intangible cultural assets with UNESCO. It features horses predominantly and of course mikoshi and such.

The most unique creature is perhaps the genbu which is kind of a cross between a turtle and a serpent. It is the daoist symbol for the north, and as this is a festival to Myoken, the Buddhist deity associated with the Pole Star and Big Dipper, it is not surprising.

If I had been here a few days earlier I could have seen the festival, but for sure I would not have been abe to get a room.

Read more on Yatsushiro and tatami

Kagoshima Jingu

After getting my hotel room in Hayato I set off the explore the local shrine, Kagoshima Jingu, and was delighted to discover that this evening was going to be the Summer Matsuri and the shrine approach was lined with stalls setting up and large lanterns decorated with chidrens painting hung everywhere.

The wooden horse at the entrance was far more decorative than any other shrine horse I had seen because this one is how a horse is decorated for the Hatsu Uma Festival when the horse leads a procession to the shrine. The festival is said to originate from a dream had by the regional Daimyo who had slept at the shrine.

There are a lot of secondary shrines throughout the extensive grounds as this was the Ichinomiya, the highest ranked shrine in the province of Osumi which today forms the eastern half of Kagoshima Prefecture. The main enshrined kami are Hoori and Toyotamahime, the grandparents of the mythical first emperor Jimmu and legend says it was founded at that time.

This is the southern Kyushu variation of the founding myth of Japan that more usually places the activity further north in the mountains of Miyazaki around Takachiho. The ceiling of the main hall is decorated with hundreds of paintings of regional plants.

Also enshrined here are Emperor Ojin and his mother Jingu, collectively enshrined as Hachiman. There are quite a few huge camphor trees in the grounds too....