Japan in Retrospect 1 : Hana Matsuri

Since we're now in the land of cheap food, accommodation (beach side huts as low as 350 rupees = $8/night...does not include toilet paper though), and internet cafe's I thought it time to reflect back on Japan and share some promised tales of our time in old Nihon (Nihon = Japan to the Japanese)..
So as it's too hot to lounge by the surf, and to avoid getting into the habit of drinking away the heat of the day, I'd try and describe some of went on at the Hana Matsuri festival we went to the weekend before we left Japan. We ended up there as my friend Teruyo from Uminari Taiko was planning on going there as she's living in Japan for a year with her family with kids and husband Rodney who's on sabbatical from teaching at UVic.
Hope you enjoy this latest installment:

I am standing in a small crowd of about 20-30 people and the local firemen are stacking burning logs on top of a clay altar until it's taller than me.  (The dark photo above shows it half built).  Everything smells like smoke and ash keeps falling into my cup of sake. The sake is free, I'm assuming it's provided by the locals here, and it's going down very nicely as it's now my third or fourth cup(who's keeping track, eh?, I'm on a honeymoon!). 
I'm standing beside a bonfire the firemen are pulling the burning logs out of to place on this altar-thingy.  It's a cold, dark and rainy night and it's all feeling very primal up here in the mountains surrounding the little town of Toei where Mere & I arrived by train yesterday afternoon.  But the fire & sake are doing a good job keeping us warm and we're all huddled together with half the crowd taking pictures and the other half talking, drinking or chekcing out the dancers and Onis (Japanese demons pronounced like 'Tony' without the 'T') that have been appearing regularly all day.  The Onis here come in varying sizes from child small to full-grown but all are dressed in bright red and have big wooden faces wth bulging eyes, rounded noses,and terrible teeth.

Fortunately, we didn't get close enough to smell their breath.  All of them come equipped with wooden axes and many know how to use them.  Earlier in the day we saw cool dances with swords and fans by kids, locals and apprentices and members of Shidara taiko who are hosting us here.
But I'll let you in on a little known secret about the onis...The onis here are POSERS.  That's right, once they apear before an audience, all they do initially is just let you bask in their glory:  Of course there was no shortage of photographers on hand to capture them in action....

This oni in rhe photo above stood there for at least 3 minutes before doing anything interesting.  But eventually, after showing itself off to everyone, the oni started doing a very slow, repetitive dance around the cauldron of water you can see in the corner of the photo above.

Now unfortunately, Teruyo, who had gotten us into this whole thing, had left early to take her kids to a tournament early the next day so we no longer had anyone who could tell us what was going on since we were the only non-Japanese in attendance and few people spoke much English, much less drunken English.

Bamboo flutes and a taiko drum from the nearby Shinto shrine are accompanying the oni and we can sense anticipation building in the crowd as someone has told us this is the biggest and strongest oni they have. The oni paparazzi is now going off but it's all a bit anti-climactic because we've been watching dancers and onis do this all day long: they come, they pose, they do a repetivie dance, the crowd cheers, they leave.  But at this point I'm becoming increasingly concerned for my safety and the safety of those around me because this tower of burning logs the local firemen have built is starting to really take off in close range to everyone and the spider-sense of my inner camp counsellor is tingling.  There's firemen in white helmets around but they seem oblivious of the crowd pressing in to see the oni.  I'm thinking the burning log tower will soon tumble onto someone and set them on fire.  Finally, the firemen move a few people out of the way as the oni's reaching the end of his dance and the flutes and drum are building up the tempo of the same song we've been hearing all day.

Suddenly, however, the oni seems to lose it and he takes his axe and starts ramming it into the tower of burning logs! I'm thinking "WTF?" as the tower starts teetering and sparks and smoke are shooting all over. But finally the oni has his way and the whole tower is knocked off it's platform onto the ground where the firemen had cleared people away from.  The crowd seems excited and pleased about this and since all seems okay, I refrain from taking out the oni and grabbing a fire extinguisher.

But wait, it's not over yet as once the oni heads off, the firemen, rather than clearing people away and extinguishing the logs like you'd think they were trained to do  start rebuilding the tower of burning logs AGAIN.  Once again everyone moves in and more onis of different sizes suddenly appear, pose, dance and then have a go at knocking off the logs which get smaller and smaller along with the age of the onis.

"Now I get it" says the drunken Canadian to himself.  To keep ash out of my cup of sake I've been having to drink from it constantly while all this has been taking place. The onis come and defeat the fire (which historically has been a huge problem in Japan since most historical buildings in Japan have been rebuilt 4 or 5 times after burning down).  Then different dancers come out bearing bushels of rice stalks which I'm guessing represent the bounty of a successful harvest thanks to the help of the oni.

So now everyone's watching this new  bushel carrying group of dancers who we then recognize as the veterans of the festival as we've seen many of them thoughout the day, helping the children dancers remember their moves, singing the accompanying songs the loudest, pouring beer and sake into the mouths of dancers mid-dance and surely I felt, these are some of the people who are the heartbeat of this festival.  Hana Matsuri is a very old and traditional festival which is why we feel fortunate to be here as it feels very intimate and genuine.  The downside however is that being gaijin (foreigners), we didn't have the opportunity to verify why the oni was knocking down the burning logs or why this new group of dancers finishes their dance by dipping their bushels of rice stalks into the cauldron of water and spraying the audience with them!.I'd been  wondering why people undercover were putting rain covers over their cameras.

Anyways, Mere and I avoided getting pulled into the ensuing water fight and the festival wound down after that.

It was a definite cultural highlight to see all the dances and feel a part of that little community in the mountains.  Earlier in the day the local police officer came up to me and asked me something in Japanese which, as usual, I couldn't understand and told him so.  He waved me off and walked away so I jokingly told Mere that the cop had  tried to shake me down.  Teruyo was still there though so I asked her to translate for me and the police officer who had just been curious about where I was from.  He said this was the safest place to be in Japan and that in the last 2 years there'd been no incidents he'd had to deal with.   He even complimented Mere and I as a good looking couple!

The other example of being included was when 2 dancers came out wearing these very ugly masks and old maid costumes.  They were also armed with rice paddles covered in miso which they proceeded to wipe on the faces of anyone in the audience they could find.  They were very comical and of course, I got singled out and given a good cheekful.  Apparently it means good luck...right.

Having front row seats to the festival wouldn't have been possible without the generous help of our friend Teruyo who I'd like to acknowledge and also the apprentices and members of Shidara taiko who were  fabulous hosts while we were there even though they were crazy busy with performances happening simultaeously with Hana Matsuri.  So we didn't get much opportunity to meet many of Shidara's members but we had a great time with the apprentices and even got to sleep with their drums (what taiko player wouldn't love that!)

The next morning, before being driven to the train, we got to help take down a lot of the festival decorations and put away everything from swords to oni masks which was also cool and a nice chance to give back.

Ever since I started playing taiko I'd been hearing about Japanese festivals since many of our songs are festival songs .  So this was another  highlight for me to not only be able to get to a festival while we were there but better yet, to have it be an up-close and personal one in beautiful remote mountains like Hana Matsuri.