Matsuri da! (57): Chochin — lamps unto their feet in NE Asia

THE FIRST RECORDED MENTION in Japan of what the Japanese call chochin, or collapsible Chinese lanterns, appeared in 1085 in the Choya Gunsai, a collection of state documents and poetic works compiled by Miyoshi Tameyasu. The lanterns did not come into common use by the public, however, until the Edo period, which began in 1600.

The public has more than made up for it since then, and chochin are still a common sight throughout Japan today. They are hung outside of Shinto shrines and used as offerings at Buddhist temples. Red lanterns adorn shop fronts on streets in every city, as they are the symbol of izakaya, a certain kind of eating and drinking establishment. (Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say drinking and eating establishment, though they serve more food than the usual Japanese pub.)

And of course they are used in Japanese festivals in a myriad of ways that are a tribute to the Japanese imagination. There’s already been an Ampontan post on the Lantern Festival in Nagasaki in February, which (like the city) has a strong Chinese influence.

Another lantern festival, shown in the first photograph, is the Natsugoshi Toro Matsuri held every summer at the Kengun Shinto shrine in Kumamoto City. About 3,000 bamboo lanterns and chochin are placed along the main path of the shrine at night. The festival is organized by local municipal organizations in the city’s east side to promote amicable relations among the districts within the city.

In addition to the static walkway display, events include a children’s procession with chochin, an adult procession with bamboo lanterns, a taiko drum performance, and dancing. One participant said that while she enjoyed lively festivals too, she found the simple and direct nature of this event appealing.

If it’s a lively festival you’re looking for, the one held a week ago in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, is as lively as a chochin festival can be. That’s the chochin fighting festival at the Usuki Hachiman shrine, an event that’s been designated an intangible cultural property of the prefecture.

This is one of the largest festivals of the Harima region in the southwestern part of Hyogo, as the shrine’s parishioners come from more than 10,000 households in 24 municipal districts. Every year on the night of October 21st, 1,000 men dressed in loincloths show up at the front of the shrine carrying three-meter long bamboo poles with a chochin attached to the end of the pole.

The guys aren’t there because they want to parade—they’ve come to whack each others’ poles and knock the chochin off. After they succeed, they keep whacking each others’ poles for the sake of whacking. Of course the chochin wind up being destroyed. If any intact lanterns happen to escape the notice of the young stick handlers, nearby onlookers thoughtfully help out by tossing the fallen lanterns back into the melee.

That scene is shown in the second photograph, but if you want a better idea of what happens, make sure to watch this video. There are three stick fighting skirmishes in all, and they let it all hang out the third time around. With the whistles, chanting, and crowd noise, it resembles a sporting event more than it does a religious ceremony. That is, if it is in fact a Shinto-derived ceremony at all.

It’s curious, but I wasn’t able to find any information on the origin of this event. Usually, there are plenty of sources describing how a festival began and the reasons for a particular activity, but I couldn’t dig up any on this one. There’s no shortage of sites explaining what happens, but none of the ones I found could explain why it happens. (Here’s a full page of photos, and this blogger has some excellent snapshots.)

Three famous lantern festivals are held in Japan every year, and one of them occurred earlier this month in Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Prefecture. (The other two are in Akita and Aichi prefectures. Here’s the Ampontan report on the former.)

The Nihonmatsu festival (third photo) features seven floats holding several hundred lanterns each, which parade through the town for three days and nights until the procession reaches the Nihonmatsu Shrine. Each of the floats represents a sheave of rice (this is the harvest season), and each carries a group of taiko drummers and flute players performing typical festival music.

The origin of this festival is well known. In 1643, Niwa Matsushige, the grandson of Niwa Nagashige, chief retainer to Oda Nobunaga, came for the first time to his new fief as the feudal lord of Nihonmatsu. He thought the conduct of good government required that the spirit of religious devotion be first aroused in the people, so he organized a festival at the Nihonmatsu shrine and invited everyone. Today’s festival might have turned out to be more elaborate and entertaining than what Niwa had in mind.

There must be something in the troposphere over Northeast Asia this time of year, because a large lantern festival is also held in October in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea. Called the Flowing Lantern Festival, there’s no question about its origins, either: the Japanese invasion of the Korean Peninsula in the late 16th century.

Local records indicate that General Kim Shi-min, at the head of 3,800 troops in Jinju Fortress, defeated a Japanese army of 20,000 that tried to cross the Nam River in October 1592. The general floated lanterns and torches down the river as a tactic to delay the Japanese army and to communicate with his troops and other support forces outside the castle. It is also said that soldiers inside the castle used lanterns to inform their families outside of their safety.

The people of Jinju continued the tradition by floating lanterns down the river as a memorial to the Koreans who died in the battle. In 1949, they started holding a lantern play, and in 2002 this became a regional festival that now attracts two million visitors a year (fourth photo). The festival is not of the traditional Japanese sort, however; it is an extravaganza that more closely resembles a Disneyland of Lanterns in southern Korea.

This year’s event was held from 1-12 October. Try this article in the Korea Times for a summary and some excellent photographs. And here’s a video taken of a stroll through the lantern archway by a Western tourist. (For more on Jinju and its relationship with Japan today, try this recent Ampontan post.)

When people say you can find illumination in the East, they aren’t fooling!

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