Vacation 2010 Day 2. A walk along the canal part 2

This is a follow on post to this earlier one.

After Hawkesbury Junction the Oxford Canal begins. Soon the canal passes a hug sub-station of the national grid...... giant pylons carrying high tension power lines converge. The fog was so thick there was no color, all was monochrome greys except the sharp white disc of the sun.

The silence added to the eeriness.

A little later I passed a sole sole.... hah!

For some reason the scene reminded me of a Mizoguchi movie.....

As the sun rose it slowly began to burn away the fog, but stillness prevailed.

Bridge number 9. One of my dreams is to spend an extended period of time walking around England along the canals. There are plenty of bridges so finding a dry place to sleep would not be difficult.

The Oxford canal is a contour canal, so there are few locks and the route is long and windy, therefore the view keeps changing.

There are a lot of people living on the canals. There are also a lot of people on vacation cruising in rental narrowboats. Another dream is to have a vacation doing just that.

Omori Floral

Up in the mountains not far from here is the Iwami Ginzan World Heritage Site, and the village of Omori is a large part of it.

Pretty much just one long street in the narrow valley below the mine, Omori is where the samurai, bureaucrats, and merchants lived.

The slaves who worked and died in the mine lived in hovels up on the mountain.

Omori is a pretty good showcase of Edo Period buildings, most of which have been restored, and to make it pretty for the throngs of tourists many property owners put small displays of flowers in front of their properties.

All these photos were taken in a one hour walk along the main street one day in May.

They are real flowers, not plastic. You need to check. I was very impressed with the flowers at Mitaki Dera until I looked closely and saw they were plastic.

Kawado Suijin Matsuri. part 2

The procession reaches the riverbank where two boats are waiting to ferry the mikoshi upstream.

One boat carries the young men with the bamboo and banners to replace last years. The giant Onusa is taken by road. By now the young men are inebriated. Drunkeness and matsuri go together and always have. The earliest records of japan from China in the 3rd century make mention of the Japanese love of alcohol.

The second boat carries the mikoshi, priests, musicians, kasaboko, and a couple of other village representatives.

Both boats head upstream a few hundred meters to the spot where suijin is venerated

A rocky outcropping at the base of a cliff. On the cliff above the Onusa is replaced. This one extends horizontally out from the cliff top so the Onusa is above the water below. You can just make it out in the top right of the photo. Here is also where the string of koinoburi are strung across the river in honor of Boys Day.

The young men pass up the bamboo and banners to the group above. Last years bamboo and banners are lowered down and disposed of in the river.

The priests read norito and make further offerings to Suijin.

The boats then return to the riverbank and the procession proceeds to a second spot on the Yato River. It used to go by boat,, but since the damming of the river it is too shallow and no longer navigable, so it goes by truck.

It seems to be a tradition that some of the young men end up in the river.

Kawado Suijin Matsuri. part 1

Most years on May 5th we cross over the river to the Suijin Matsuri in Kawado. This year we went instead to our local Suijin Matsuri in Tanijyugo.

Like all matsuri, the kawado Suijin Matsuri begins with ceremonies in the local shrine.

Earlier in the morning the kids had their own Enko Matsuri.

The priest told me that this is the most important ceremony of the year. Kawado is built in the fork of 2 rivers, the Yato and the Go, and has suffered from devastating floods, most recently 50 years ago, so pacifying the god of the river is important. 2 other priests from villages upriver also take part.

The procession with the mikoshi descends the steps from the shrine on its short journey to the riverbank.

Kawado is not much bigger than Tanijyugo, yet the matsuri here is still well supported by the people of the village, though I hear complaints that every year there are fewer and fewer people.

To the accompaniment of flute and drum the parade heads for the riverbank where the boats wait for the next stage.

In the procession there are a couple of Hanakasboko, a parasol-like object with colorful attachments. I have been unable to find out anything about them, though later this week I'm going to a matsuri that has especially large ones, so maybe I can discover their origin and purpose.

The last 100 meters along the rocky riverbank the mikoshi is put on a trailer and pulled.

Rice planting maidens. Saotome.

Saotome, rice-planting maidens from last weekends Tauebayashi Matsuri up in Atoichi.

Saotome appear in all kinds of rice planting ceremonies and rituals all over Japan. The link between agriculture, fertility, and sexuality was common to many rites in agricutural societies, though as far as I know in Japan the explicit link still exists at only one shrine up in Asuka.

Nowadays the maidens come in all ages.

It is difficult to overstate the obsession Japanese have with rice.

To the horror of any Japanese who know me, I don't like the plain, white, sticky, stuff!

Barbarian that I am.

Actually for most japanese, rice only became the staple food relatively recently. For most of japanese history the common people subsisted on a porridge made from various grains. White rice was reserved for special occasions.

The rich lived on white rice, and it is believed emperors and lords sometimes died from beri-beri.

Atoichi Children's Tauebayashi Matsuri

I had a thoroughly enjoyable time at the Atoichi Children's Tauebayashi Matsuri.

Following a small ceremony in front of the school, the procession made its way to the rice paddies that belong to the school.

For those whose only experience of Matsuri is at the major sites in the towns and cities, you are missing a very important aspect of matsuri, and that is community. In village matsuris there is a real festive atmosphere not based on alcohol. As at the rest of the time in these remote communities, people are friendly to visitors and one genuinely feels like a guest.

All the generations were involved, even the school principal, seen here on the drum.

The children come from the elementary school as well as Junior Highschool, Highschool, and even a couple of college students.

While Tauebayashi may have its roots in days long gone, it, like Taiko drum groups, Yosakoi dancing, etc are mostly a late twentieth Century phenomenon.

The festival in Atoichi is in its sixteenth year, and I would say it was a success in its aim of keeping alive the sense of village community.

As we were leaving we were given a couple of bags of mochi, rice cakes, made from last years harvest.

Atoichi Elementary School

On Sunday we drove up into the mountains to the village of Atoichi where we found a wonderful example of an old, wooden school building. It was built in 1931, and apparently that makes it one of the oldest.

Most Japanese schools, especially post-war, look like abandoned prisons or factories (which is pretty much what they are in my opinion), but all the wood of this one made it feel quite humane.

One man I spoke to, about my age, said that when he was at the school there were 400 students.

Now there are 19.

There was a big room for practising Tea ceremony. On a chart in the entrance hall was a list of all the local community members, mostly elderly, who volunteer at the school teaching things like art, tea ceremony, etc.

In one of the hamlets that make up Atoichi, the youngest member of the community is 78.

There was a computer room with at least 10 computers, which probably means it has the best computer to student ratio in any Japanese school.

I wonder how many more years it will be till the school is closed and the building begins its descent to becoming one more Haikyo.

It was Sunday, but most of the student body were in the playground, dressed up for Matsuri.

Behind the school buildings are some paddies, where the students grow their own rice, and today was the annual Tauebayashi (Rice planting song and dance) Festival.

Tanijyugo Suijin Matsuri. Part 2

The first Suijin site is a large tree on the bank of the river just next to the candy-colored bridge.

This is the spot where the small ferry boat used to cross the river. Before the river was dammed it was much more violent than now, and many people drowned at this spot.

A few older people turn up carrying bamboos with streamers attached. On the streamers are written the names of children of the family. It should have been the parents bringing the banners, but it was left up to the grandparents.

The old Onusa on its bamboo pole is first removed and thrown into the river. This is a traditional form of purification. Polluted things are thrown into the water and taken away to the depths of the sea.

In former times the Onusa was attached to the tree by someone climbing up the tree. The long bamboo pole is a more modern "safer" way.

On the opposite bank of the river the Suijin Matsuri of kawado is underway. I just checked and realized that I havent posted about it yet, so will do that in a few days.

Once the Onusa and streamers are attached to the tree the priest then performs some more rituals. Sake is poured at the base, and some rice is scattered.

The purpose of the Onusa is to pacify the spirit of Suijin, the Water God. Spirit-pacification is a major part of what is now called Shinto,but its roots lie in Daoism and Yin-Yang Theory.

We then move downstream half a kilometer to the second site. This is right above what used to be a deep and dangerous part of the river that had the "7 day whirlpool". If your boat got sucked into it, it would take 7 days to row out. This is also the site of the local Enko legend, something else I havent gotten round to posting about yet.

Following the rituals everyone heads back to the shrine for the closing ceremony. Everyone in attendance is given a Mikuma, a small folded paper that contains a few grains of the rice that was on the altar as an offering to Suijin. The rice is from the village, and the priest suggests we add the grains next time we cook some rice.