Matsuri da! (77): Hoi! Hoi! It’s a hanami and matsuri both!

SOME FOLKS ARE CULTURAL PURISTS: for them, the value of traditions lies in maintaining them in the same form year in and year out. But that overlooks the many traditions that are born as hybrids to create something that isn’t inherently pure to start with. The Japanese, whose traditions are older and more diverse than most, often merrily mix and match from their vast cultural storehouse to come up with all sorts of marvelous creations.

One of those marvelous creations is the Minamisanno-sai, the spring festival held every 4 April at the Hie Shinto shrine in Hino-cho, Shiga. The sheer variety of events that are the centerpiece of Shinto festivals in Japan are a testament to the human imagination, and the Minamisanno-sai is no exception. What makes this festival unique?

A hanami, or a party while viewing cherry-blossoms! This time of year, friends and relatives throughout the country gather in public parks or private plots, large or small, day or night, to enjoy their favorite food and drink while sitting under cherry trees in full bloom. If it seems that a hanami is the type of pastime that would have appealed to the aristocracy centuries ago, then your cultural antennae are sensitive indeed. These elegant spring picnics were popular with the nobility during the Heian period (794-1185). Several centuries later, during the Edo period (1603-1867), the amusement spread to the public at large.

It was at that time that the common folk in Hino-cho came up with the idea to combine the pleasant diversion of a hanami, which has no religious significance whatsoever, with a Shinto festival. During the festival, the flowering cherries are symbolically offered to the divinities in supplication for a bountiful harvest. But how can entire trees become a religious offering every year?

They aren’t uprooted and transplanted because the trees are man-made. Each of the 22 districts served by the shrine makes a tree by attaching pink and white paper flowers to four-meter-long bamboo branches, called hoi, which are attached to five-meter-high bamboo poles. These representations of trees are then erected on the shrine grounds.

The paper and bamboo cherries are called Hoi Nobori, which has to be an intentional play on the term koi nobori, or carp streamers, the large tubular pennants resembling carp that will be hung next month to commemorate Boys’ Day on 5 May.

As you can see in the photo, cherry trees in bloom in the spring provide a good excuse for Japanese to camp underneath and start eating and drinking, whether the flowers are real or not. This year, there were about 400 happy campers in Hie-cho. Lucky for them that wasn’t a paper sun in a crayon blue sky!

Try this page for some more excellent photos of the event. It’s in Japanese, but don’t let that stop you from paying them a visit—the pictures do the talking.