Hands across the Sea of Japan

IT’S A RELIABLE rule of thumb that a nation’s political class is more often the problem than the solution regardless of the matter at hand. The reliability of that rule continues to be borne out by the behavior of the Japanese in Kyushu and the Koreans on the southern part of the peninsula. While the politicos vaguely talk the talk about the importance of good bilateral relations, folks on the ground continue to walk the walk and do the job themselves. Here are two more examples—one of people at work, and the other of people at play.

At work

Busan’s Ulsan region in South Korea resembles Kyushu in that it is the center of flourishing auto and shipbuilding industries. The Ulsan region, however, is home to 1,500 companies in the industrial textile sector that supplies products to both. Many of the firms have created a niche by producing items for car interiors and specialty textiles, and they are eager to develop ties and do business with Kyushu’s auto industry.

To help them make their pitch, the International Footwear, Textile, and Fashion Expo in Busan has invited representatives from Kyushu auto companies to attend the three-day event starting on the 19th. Business and opinion leaders on both sides of the Korea Strait are excited about the potential. The Nishinippon Shimbun described that potential in two stories on the Expo and the specialty textile industry in the Ulsan region that covered half a page.

They quoted Paek Mu-hyon, the chair of a textile industry group in Busan:

“We want to promote technical ties and business with Kyushu’s many auto companies and use high-function Japanese and Korean products to compete against China, which is increasing its presence as a market and production region.”

Who needs summit meetings about East Asian entities when the private sector demonstrates this much enthusiasm to achieve the same result on their own?

At play

Here are two events that go together like ice cream and cake. The first is the Yamaga Lantern Dance, a festival from Yamaga, Kumamoto, in which hundreds of women dance to a stately traditional folk song while dressed in summer yukata and wearing lighted lanterns made of paper and glue on their heads. (Here’s a previous post with photos.) The second is the Seoul World Lantern Festival, which is underway in that city right now and will run until the 15th. Those of you near Seoul and willing to visit will have a chance to have your ice cream and cake and eat it too, when the women from Yamaga perform on Saturday and Sunday.

Yamaga officials say the dancers visit such Asian cities as Shanghai and Singapore once a year, but this is the first time they’ve been to South Korea since 1993. Held on the banks of the Cheonggyecheon, the Lantern Festival is one of the attractions of the 2012 Visit Korea Year. The events feature performances from South Korea, Japan, and China, and the area is decorated with displays of both real lanterns and lantern-like objects. During the Yamaga performance, the streets will be lined with candles in bamboo holders and traditional Japanese umbrellas. In addition to the group from Yamaga, a group from the Nebuta festival in Aomori will also participate.

The lack of coverage given by the overseas media to this flourishing cross-strait interaction notwithstanding, the only remarkable thing about this activity is that it isn’t remarkable at all—it’s a fact of daily life. Regional and local politicians have enough sense to either get out of the way and let it happen, or lend a helping hand from behind, rather than elbowing their way to the front to pose for photo ops.

Now if the national politicians would only get the hint that grand schemes aren’t necessary when people are allowed to act naturally without interference. Everyone else already has.

A glass of champon

WHEN THE FOLKS in Kyushu use the word champon, they’re usually talking about a bowl of noodle soup created at a Chinese restaurant in Nagasaki during the latter part of the 19th century. In other words, it’s a Japanese version of Chinese food.

But when the folks in Fukuoka City’s Higashi Ward use the word champon, they’re talking about glass toys sold during the Hojoya festival presented by the local Hakozaki-gu Shinto shrine. The work for putting the finishing touches on those toys is being done now, even though the festival is held in September.

Edo beauty toys with a champon

The champon is an unusual toy because it employs the flexibility of glass. The user alternately inhales and exhales from the tube end, causing the film at the bottom of the flared end to vibrate back and forth and make a noise. First there is a higher-pitched tone that to Hakata ears sounds like “chan”, and that’s followed by a lower tone that sounds like “pon”. The traditional glass blowing technique used to make the toys requires great skill, but the blowing technique to play with the toy takes little or no skill at all.

People in other parts of the country call these playthings biidoro, which is derived from vidro, the Portuguese word for glass. Some also call them poppen, which is a different onomatopoetic rendition of the sound the glass makes. Same sound, different ears!

The toys have been around in Japan for a while, as the illustration shows a well-known Utamaro print of an Edo beauty amusing herself with one. They weren’t sold at the Hakata festival until the second part of the 19th century, however, and the shrine stopped making them during the Taisho period, which ran from 1911 to 1925. But if your national history goes back a couple of millennia, it’s easy to find something old on a shelf in the cultural warehouse when looking for a new idea to spice up a custom, and the shrine resumed making the champon in 1971.

Hakata beauties making champon

The photo shows two of six miko, or shrine maidens, using bright acrylic paint and thin brushes to paint pictures on the toys. The decorative illustrations are usually of flowers and dragonflies. This year, however, the miko are using for the first time a chrysanthemum design that one of them created, demonstrating yet again how willing the Japanese are to incorporate new tricks into an old tradition. There are 10 different types of champon, and the miko will make about 2,100 by the end of August. That hand-painted labor doesn’t come cheap—it’ll cost from JPY 3,000 to 9,000 ($US 94.98) to buy one at the festival.

The Hojoe festival, by the way, is known as one of the three major Hakata festivals, Hakata being another name for the Fukuoka area. It attracts in the neighborhood of 300,000 people every year. The festival itself originated from a Buddhist ceremony for releasing fish and birds back into the wild, based on the old precept in that religion against the killing of animals. The Shintoists liked it so much they adopted it as well, and the festival is conducted at other Hachiman shrines throughout the country under the name of Hojoya.

All this talk of mixing religious traditions and giving them different names in different places is an excellent excuse to refer back to the bowl of Chinese noodles created in Japan known as champon. The origin of that word is not onomatopoetic; rather, one theory holds that it comes from the Chinese word 掺混 in the Hokkien dialect, which means “to mix”. It would be pronounced chanhun in standard Chinese, and the Japanese would naturally change that h to either a b or a p in their pronunciation because it follows a syllable-ending n.

But it gets better. The Okinawans have a dish of their own called chanpuru, which also means “mixed” in their dialect. The Koreans eat yet a different version, called jjamppong (짬뽕), which is also said to be slang for “mix up” (though it’s not in my K-E dictionary). And the word champon itself has entered standard Japanese to mean mix together or alternate. That one is in my J-E dictionary, though I can’t remember hearing anybody use it that way in a conversation.

Buddhist and Shinto, Hakata and Fukuoka, hojoe and hojoya, champon and poppen, and champon, chanhun, chanpuru, and jjamppong…doesn’t that sum it up perfectly? Northeast Asia in general–and Japan in particular–has always been a champon kind of a place!

Matsuri da! (107): The mikoshi marathon

A KEY ELEMENT of most Shinto festivals are the portable shrines known as mikoshi. Rites in other religions usually require the performance of strictly defined acts from which there is little or no deviation. One distinguishing feature of Shinto matsuri, however, is that there is very little from which to deviate to begin with. It’s hard to get stuffy about tradition when the founding principle seems to have been “Hey, that’s a great idea! Let’s try it and see what happens!”

The standard operating procedure during a festival is for the carriers to vigorously raise and lower the mikoshi while calling out shouts of self-encouragement during the procession. Meanwhile, the onlookers provide encouragement of their own from alongside the parade route, often drenching the carriers with buckets of water to cool them off—summer or winter, it makes no difference. When you’re hot and sweaty from all that work, you need to get cool!

But there are also festivals in which the mikoshi are hauled up the side of a steep mountain, run down the side of a mountain on narrow stone stairs at top speed in the middle of the night, carried under a waterfall, jumped over a blazing fire, used as a weapon in a street fight with another mikoshi-carrying group, or just smashed to pieces as a sign of devotion.

Though there are plenty of stories of how the mikoshi are used, few of those stories specifically mention how long those processions last. One exception is the story I came across for a festival last month at the Yudanosan Shinto shrine in Yamagata.

The event starts with the hakkosai ceremony, in which part of the spirit is taken from the tutelary deity at the shrine and placed in the mikoshi. Then about 150 young parishioners from a group known as the Miyuki-kai (神幸会) carry it around a six-kilometer course in Yamagata City chanting “Soiya sah!” The group does more than just go through the motions and then go home. It takes them seven hours to conduct this part of the festival. That must be one of the reasons for having 150 members in the Miyuki-kai–they have to take turns doing the heavy lifting.

That object at the top in gold leaf, by the way, is the ho’o, a type of phoenix whose myths originated in China. A mythical Chinese creature on top of a palanquin for a Shinto divinity–now how’s that for another example of Japanese syncretism? The ho’o seems to have been created from spare parts–the front was shaped like a giraffe, the rear like a deer, the head like a snake, the tail like a fish, and the back like a turtle. It’s enough to make you wonder how much hemp was cultivated in China in the old days.

The Yudonosan shrine has a history even more interesting than the festival it conducts. It’s located 1,500 meters (about 4,920 feet) above sea level, and the hike required to get there is not for the faint or weak of heart. The photo here shows the large red torii, but the shrine itself is far enough down the path and up the side of the mountain that a special bus leaving from the building at left takes visitors the rest of the way for 200 yen. It’s not possible to post a photo of the shrine itself, because photography at the site is forbidden.

Once visitors arrive, they have to remove their shoes to enter, and that, like the photo prohibition, is not a common practice at most institutions. Then again, the shrine is located in an uncommon area. The Yudonosan mountain is one of three in a group of mountains and valleys that were a site for Buddhist ascetic practices for more than a millennium. Some of the heavy hitters of Japanese Buddhism came here for meditation and enlightenment, including Kukai, the founder of the Shingon sect, and Saicho, the founder of the Tendai sect.

Their practices were uncommonly rigorous, and included vegetarian meals, daily ablutions, and Yudono no Hozen worship three times a day for 30, 50, or 1,000 consecutive days to remove their impurities. Another objective for some was to achieve Buddhahood while still in the material body, a practice called sokushinjobutsu, and at Yudonosan the preferred method was to meditate until one became “mummified”, as the explanation has it. Some of the remains of these people still exist in northern Niigata.

While in those days the site primarily attracted Buddhists, the institution itself was one of many that shared space with a Shinto shrine. When they were split up during the Meiji era reforms, the Buddhist temples relocated elsewhere. Why did they move and the shrine stay? I don’t know, but it might have been because the shrine’s shintai, the object of worship in which the divinity’s spirit dwells, was a large rock from which a natural hot spring emerges.

It has to be easier to build another temple than it is to change the course of a hot spring in the mountains!

Japan’s cultural kaleidoscope (2)

BAREFOOTIN’ IN TEE-SHIRTS and short pants, all the better to deal with the 30-minute turnarounds of pouring rain and blazing sun: yeah, summer has arrived at last in Japan. During the dog days, the archipelago offers all sorts of hot-weather delights, including watermelon, shaved ice, and best of all, the transformation of even the most neo-radical of young women into traditional beauties once they exchange their jeans for yukata (a summer kimono).

What else is going on up and down the islands? Well, take a look and find out!

Firefly festivals

Once upon a time, summer nights on the East Coast of the United States came alive with a light show au naturel created by fireflies. The march of progress and suburbia seems to have ended all that, but the lightning bugs, as we used to call them, are still alive and flickering in the countryside here.

This is Japan, so take it as given that people know just when to expect their appearance every year, just how long it will last, and how to organize the viewing parties and festivals held to coincide with those dates.

Lightning bugs!

The photo shows the fireflies near the Ayu River in Tanabe, in the southern part of Wakayama. It’s one of several locations in the area known as superb firefly viewing sites from the end of May to the beginning of June.

But as with the cherry blossoms and the rainy season, the firefly front keeps marching north, and right now the folks in Yonezawa, Yamagata, are enjoying a month-long firefly festival at the Onogawa spa. The festival is sponsored by the spa’s tourism association and the Yonezawa Firefly Protection Society. The opening ceremony was held at the local memorial firefly tower to pray for the safety of the participants during the event. Those Yonezawans must really like fireflies!

It’s not a festival in Japan without liquor, so right after the prayers they perform another centuries-old ritual by knocking open the head of a sake barrel with wooden hammers and passing the hooch around. They say some people see double when they drink too much, so you can imagine the sort of visions that light up the retinas of the festival-goers when a wave of fireflies floats by.

The viewing in Yonezawa begins on the riverbank right after it gets dark at 8:00 p.m. and lasts until 9:00. The area is such a firefly mecca that three different species breed here, and who but the entomologists knew there were different types of lightning bugs? For a spot of relaxation after all this excitement, the open-air baths stay open until nine, and there’s a tea house set up temporarily next to the firefly tower. The festival fun lasts until 31 July, but some people like to time their visit for the amateur entertainment contest on the 4th and 5th.

Hatsukiri

Sliding over from zoology to botany, here’s a photo of the festival held by the Miyajidake Shinto shrine in Fukutsu, Fukuoka, for the first cutting of Edo irises in a local garden. The purpose of the event, called Hatsukiri—first cutting, appropriately enough—is to present the irises as an offering to the divinities. They’ve got plenty of flowers from which to choose, because the garden has 30,000 individual plants. While the priests grunt, bend over, and swing their scythes, two miko hold irises as they perform a dance accompanied by a flute. More than 200 people came to watch. A small turnout, you say? That’s not a bad crowd for watching two girls perform a centuries-old dance in costume in a garden in a town of 56,000 while priests cut flowers. How many people would show up where you live?

The shrine held its Iris festival on the same day. They place 70,000 irises in front of the shrine and light ‘em up until 9:00 p.m. for 10 days. The shrine has its own iris garden too, started from bulbs sent by the Meiji-jingu in Tokyo in 1965. They now have 100,000 plants in 100 varieties. That’s a heck of a lot of irises, but they need that many to go around for all of Shinto’s yaoyorozu divine ones. (Yaoyorozu is the traditional number of divinities in Shinto. It literally means eight million, but figuratively represents an infinite number, signifying that each natural object has a divine spirit.)

Seaweed cutting

Irises weren’t the only flora getting cut for a Shinto ritual. Four priests from the Futamikitama Shinto shrine in Ise, Mie, boarded a boat with some miko and sailed offshore for some seaweed cutting. They present the seaweed—fortunately an uncountable noun—to the divinities, allow it to dry out for a month, and then distribute it to their parishioners to drive out bad fortune and eradicate impurities.

At 10:30 a.m., the priests set sail on their skiff festooned with red, yellow, green, purple, and white streamers, with bamboo grass placed at bow and stern, and headed for the special seaweed site 770 meters northeast of the Futami no Meoto, sometimes called the Wedded Rocks. (The word meoto designates a pair of something, one large and one small.) Since this is a special ritual, they can’t just start cutting—first they have to circle the divine Kitama rock on the seabed three times, then they haul out a three-meter long sickle and get to work.

Sea goya

Since the subject is aquatic plants, now’s as good a time as any to report that the Fukuka Aquaculture Center in Kin-machi, Okinawa, is ramping up production of a new variety of sea grapes they hope to popularize in Japan after sales start next month. The center has dubbed the new type “sea goya”, after the knobby bitter squash for which Okinawa is famous. (Here’s a previous post about sea grapes in Okinawa and goya in general.)

Tastes as good as it looks!

The center’s director said they discovered these particular sea grapes among a batch imported in March 2008. The new variety flourished in the southern climate, and that gave people the idea to turn it into a new product, particularly as they were looking for ways to juice the market after the prices of regular sea grapes and mozuku seaweed tanked.

They decided to call the new plant sea goya because it’s more elongated than regular sea grapes and has the bitter flavor of goya. The center has already applied to register the name as a trademark, and they’re confident the application will be approved. After hearing about the new product, more than 10 companies inquired about handling the distribution.

Nara ayu

After insects, irises, seaweed, and sea grapes, here come the freshwater fish: namely the ayu, or sweetfish, which we’ve encountered before in a post about their encounters with traditional traps.

Some sweetfish just for you

These sweetfish, however, were caught by means with an even longer and exalted pedigree—trained cormorants. The birds require keepers that are somewhat analogous to falconers, all of whom ply their skills for the Imperial Household Agency because the technique is a tradition of the Japanese Imperial household. (Dig their costumes in the photo at the link.)

Six keepers were employed to catch the fish at the Imperial fishing grounds on the Nagara River in Gifu City, but the keepers can handle up to a dozen birds on the end of ropes, so they must have taken quite a haul. They go out in boats too, but at night, and they take along lighted torches. The fish are attracted to the flame like maritime moths, and the birds dive in after them. The lower part of the cormorants’ necks are collared to prevent them from swallowing the fish, and after they’ve snatched one, the keepers reel them in and make them cough it up. That’s got to be more cruel than feeding a dog peanut butter.

The fish were packed into paulownia boxes and shipped to the Kashihara-jingu, a Shinto shrine in Kashihara, Nara, as well as the Imperial Palace and the Meiji-jingu, another Shinto shrine in Tokyo. Both shrines have an Imperial connection.

The Japanese have been using cormorants to catch sweetfish since at least the 8th century—don’t you wonder who came up with that idea?–and the Nagara River event is more than a millennium old, but this shrine has been receiving the sweetfish shipments only since 1940 to offer in prayer for the safety of fishing and a good catch. (The 1940 date suggests it might have begun as part of the celebrations that year marking the 2600th anniversary of the establishment of the Japanese Imperial House.)

Contributing to the delinquency of minors

Yet another sign of summer in Japan is the yaoyorozu of rice-planting festivals held throughout the country. It’s easy to figure out why—they grow the rice in wet paddies, which are made even wetter by all the rain that falls this time of year.

But the students at Miyoshi High School in Miyoshi, Tokushima, weren’t planting this rice as part of a festival; they were getting classroom credit. The lads aren’t planning to be farmers when they grow up–rather, they’re enrolled in a course covering the brewing and fermentation of food products. They’ll harvest that rice in the fall and use it to make sake.

The rice is grown on a 3,000-square-meter paddy the school rents from area residents. The teachers do most of the planting with a machine, and then some of the second year students wade right in and plant by hand those parts the machine can’t reach. They expect to harvest 1.5 tons of the rice in mid-September, which can probably be converted into enough sake to keep the town of Miyoshi more lit than a riverbank full of fireflies until New Year’s. The school started the project last year, and this year they increased the size of the cultivated area six-fold to use only the rice grown by students.

One of those students, 16-year-old Fukuda Shinya, had planted rice before, but he said the seedlings were more difficult to handle because the size was different than that of regular table rice.

Now why couldn’t I have gone to that school!

Shochu collector

While the high school students were outdoors sweating and getting dirty as they planted the rice for the sake they will later brew, Masuyama Hiroki (73) of Izumi, Kagoshima, was relaxing with an adult beverage as he contemplated the success of his 12-year effort to collect one bottle each from all the prefecture’s shochu distillers. This is Kagoshima, where everyone drinks shochu and almost no one drinks sake, so he had his work cut out for him.

He’s so proud of his accomplishment he’s got them lined up on the wall, and hasn’t twisted the cap on a single bottle. Mr. Masuyama decided to make it is hobby after he retired from a job with the prefectural government in 1996 and started working in sales. His business trips took him throughout Kagoshima, and after he got the idea—probably in a bar during one of those business trips–he made a list and started buying while he was selling. He started with 1.8 liter (1.92 US quarts) bottles, but they were too heavy and took up too much space, so he switched to bottles half that size. He had a few difficulties completing the collection, and no, one of them wasn’t a tendency to polish off a bottle before before he could display it on the rack. For one thing, the smaller bottles were sold mainly to commercial establishments, but he applied his salesmen’s skills to get what he wanted. Another was that he didn’t have much of a chance to go to the prefecture’s many outlying islands on business. After retiring from his second job, it took two more years to finish the project.

Mr. Masuyama says he enjoys looking at his collection while having a late-night drink, but his libation doesn’t come from those shelves on the wall. He hasn’t opened any of the bottles and says it would be a waste to drink them.

Now there’s a man with discipline!

Miko class

Shinto shrine maidens, known as miko, get to do all sorts of fun stuff. In this post alone, they’ve sailed out to the Wedded Rocks to help the priests cut seaweed, carried the sacred sweetfish caught by cormorants, and danced while the priests cut Edo irises in Fukutsu. Even better, they get to handle the money at the shrine during New Year’s.

Doesn’t that sound like a great part-time job? If that’s the kind of work you’re looking for, the Kanda Myojin Shinto shrine in Chiyoda, Tokyo, is offering a beginner’s level course that provides instruction in how to become a miko. Even better, the class will last only one day, on 17 August—the middle of summer vacation!

Kanda Myojin conducts the class every year with the idea of giving young Japanese women a better idea of their traditions and culture, as well as teaching them more about the shrine. Last year, the student body consisted of 24 women who got to wear the red and white outfit for a day as they studied the shrine’s history, the daily conduct of affairs at the shrine, and its religious ceremonies.

Considering they charge only JPY 5,000 yen ($US 52.40), that sounds like a good deal. They’re looking for 20 unmarried young women this year from 16 to 22, and enrollment is open until the end of the month.

The declaration of the eisa nation

Start with a party, end with a party. This particular hoedown is the eisa dance native to Okinawa. Centuries ago, it was performed as a rite for the repose of the dead, but now it’s done for entertainment and is more likely to wake the dead than ease their way into the next world.

Okinawa City issued a proclamation declaring itself Eisa Town earlier this month, and held a Declaration Day Eisa Night event outside the city offices to lay claim to the title. Six groups made their eisadelic statement as they performed in original/trad clothing they created themselves. Eisa Night means that eisa season has officially started in the city, and summer in this city means that local youth groups will give public performances every weekend until the really big show, the Okinawa Eisa Festival in September.

During her greeting at the ceremony, Mayor Tomon Mitsuko said, “We hope you come to Okinawa City on the weekends and enjoy yourselves.” Then the dancing started and everyone proceeded to do just that.

It’s not just for the Ryukyuans, either. One of the six groups performing was the Machida-ryu of Machida, Tokyo, who started their own group in 1999 after a trip to Okinawa. They were so captivated by the dance they had to do it themselves at home. Now the troupe has more than 100 members.

There’s an idea: create your own Okinawan dance and drum ensemble and visit Eisa Town next year. If you want to learn, watching the video is a great way to start!

Japan’s cultural kaleidoscope

TECHNOPOLIS TOKYO is the image of Japan for many—-an ultra-sheen world of hyper-intense, manga-reading otaku and hyper-style-conscious gyaru wearing fake hair color, fake designer clothes, and fake undergarments, all jazzed on robots and consumer electronics and with a cell phone welded to the palms of their hands.

For most of the country, however, that’s just an alternate reality flickering in and out of existence over a template of tradition more than a millennium old. Here people can flirt with fashion while staying within eyesight of customs maintained for hundreds of years. The following stories are recent examples of how the timeless in this country is still the quotidian. All of them occurred in the space of less than a fortnight, and Tokyo was the location for only one.

Kakimoto Festival

Waka and tanka poet Kakimoto no Hitomaro (662-710) was the most prominent of the poets represented in the Man’yoshu, the oldest anthology of Japanese poetry, which itself dates from the 8th century. The Toda Kakimoto shrine in Masuda, Shimane, held its annual festival to honor Kakimoto on the date he is said to have died, as it has for more than 1,200 years.

Kakimoto is the tutelary deity of the shrine, which was built in his honor when someone from the area returned with a lock of hair from his corpse.

After the primary ceremony, a mikoshi (portable shrine) holding his spirit was carried 300 meters from the main shrine to the site of his birth. Local children dressed as miko, or shrine maidens, performed a dance there in his honor while ringing bells, and the 70 people watching quietly bowed their heads.

Naoe Kanetsugu Lantern

Naoe Kanetsugu (1560-1619) was known for his service as retainer to the Uesugi daimyo, his seamanship, and his love affair with Uesugi Kenshin in the beautiful samurai style. The Uesugi clan fought on the losing side in the Battle of Sekigahara, which cleared the way for the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate. A recent NHK television program renewed interest in Naoe and his life.

In December 1600, a few months after the battle, Naoe presented a lantern to the Kasuga Taisha, a Nara City Shinto shrine whose close ties with the Uesugi family dated from 1588. (The shrine itself was founded in 768.) It was offered in supplication for the peace and tranquility of Kenshin’s adopted son Uesugi Kagekatsu, who assumed control of the clan and had also fought with Hideyoshi in Korea before his defeat by Tokunaga Ieyasu.

The 56-centimeter-high bronze lantern usually hangs in a corridor of the shrine’s main hall, but shrine officials recently displayed it outside so everyone could see it.

Nara Yabusame

Those who went to see the Naoe lantern at the Nara City Kasuga Taisha could have shot two birds with one arrow by watching a group of 40 archers from the Ogasawara school of yabusame (equestrian archery) offer a display of their technique to the shrine.

One ceremony was the Hikime-no-Gi, in which arrows called kabura-ya were fired over the roofs of buildings as a way to drive out evil spirits. If you were standing next to a building and the sky was suddenly hailing arrows, wouldn’t you leave too? They also performed the Momote-shiki, which is part of their daily practice. Ten archers lined up in front of the shrine dressed in white robes and fired 10 arrows apiece in pairs at a target. The depth of the tradition involved is such that the paired arrows have names; the first is called haya and the second is called otoya. Ten times ten equals one hundred, which is the origin of the ceremony’s name: momote in Japanese means a hundred hands.

Tokko no Yu

Enough of this new stuff whose age in centuries you can count with your fingers—here’s another millennium-plus story.

Legend has it that the famous monk/scholar/poet Kobo Daishi, who introduced the Shingon teachings in Japan, washed his ill father in the chilly waters near Izu, Shizuoka. For some reason he decided to break a rock with a tokko, an implement used in Buddhist services, and lo and behold, water sprang forth. That’s the origin of the Shuzen-ji hot springs. The annual Tokko no Yu (the hot water of the tokko) ceremony is held to commemorate the founding of the spa about 1,200 years ago, to thank the monk for picking that spot, and to placate his spirit. The original location of the incident is said to now be submerged in the Shuzenji River, and the spa itself was moved downstream this year to escape flood damage caused by heavy rains.

A group of 34 women wearing pink kimono and yukata and carrying wooden buckets departed from the grounds of the Shuzen-ji Buddhist temple and headed for the spa in a procession accompanied by children. Each of the women received spa waters from monks waiting at the site, paraded through the town, and returned to the temple to offer the water. After a reading of sutras, the water was presented to several local ryokan (Japanese-style inns).

Ise Spring Festival

The Ise shrine in Mie, closely associated with the Imperial household, held its spring kagura festival of Shinto song and dance on a stage specially built on the grounds. The festival is held in both the spring and fall to pray for peace and give thanks for the blessings of the divinities.

Two male dancers entered the stage bearing halberds (a spear/battle-ax combo) and purified the area to the accompaniment of flute and taiko drums. This was followed by another Shinto dance called the Ranryo’o, after which four female dancers wearing brightly colored butterfly wings performed the Kocho. The performances were presented twice a day for a three-day period.

Picking Tea in Shizuoka

No story of Japan past or present is complete without a green tea pick-me-up, so here’s a photo of the Misono tea picking ceremony held at a special plantation at the Sengen shrine in Shizuoka. The four tea-picking miko wore period costumes and worked in pairs as 60 watched. They wound up bagging 3 kilograms, which a local society used to brew for offering as sencha (medium-grade tea) to the divinities at a separate tea festival.

Here’s the best part: This is a new event that this year was held for only the fifth time. Considering the content, however, it could just as easily have been 500 years old as five. In Japan, the new being the old and the old becoming the new is just a matter of nichijo sahanji—literally, daily rice and tea, meaning an everyday occurrence.

Akihabara Gagaku

Another example of nichijo sahanji is the combination of the very old with the very new, as demonstrated by the live gagaku performance held at Akihabara, the Tokyo district famous as the Mecca of consumer electronics. It was presented by the nearby Kanda shrine to publicize an upcoming festival. The site was a stage at a vacant building in the district most often used by budding pop singers and dancers. But shrine officials wanted to attract to their festival younger people who had never been before, so this was their first-ever gagaku performance outside shrine grounds.

The miko performed a dance usually reserved for wedding ceremonies to the accompaniment of flutes and drums.

And I’ll bet the first thing they did when the dance was over was to check their cell phones for messages!

Matsuri da! (107): Burning the old biddy

MANY JAPANESE FESTIVALS are held to pray for a bountiful harvest, but the parishioners of the Junisho Shinto shrine of Toyo’oka in Hyogo have an unusual way of going about it—they burn a straw effigy of an old woman. Scoff if you must, but there must be something to be said for its effectiveness. They’ve been doing it for almost 800 years now.

But let’s start at the beginning, even though Japanese history is such a continuum that it’s sometimes difficult to pinpoint either the beginning or the end. For the purposes of the story, however, let’s point the pin at the Gotoba Tenno (emperor), number 82 in line if you’re counting. His name is also written Go-Toba.

He ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne at the age of three and reigned until the age of 18, when he was forced to abdicate by the first of the Kamakura shoguns. But he was a persistent man, and he placed his two sons on the throne to succeed him, first Tsuchimikado and then Juntoku. But the Kamakura shogun was just as persistent, and he kicked both of them out too.

Tsuchimikado and Juntoku had different mothers, incidentally, neither of whom was the official empress. In fact, Gotoba supposedly had 18 children by 11 different women, mostly court ladies, though some were the daughters of priests, some were dancing girls, some were probably both, and several were of the Fujiwara family, who frequently became the wives or consorts of tenno in those days. Both the official empress Gishumon-in and Juntoku’s mother were Fujiwaras, but Gishumon-in gave birth to only one daughter, who never married. The daughter eventually became Juntoku’s adoptive mother, which sounds as if there’s plenty more story where that came from, but it’s time to get back on the main line here.

So while Gotoba lived a life of wealth and leisure in a palace, dallying with the court ladies and writing waka, he understandably nursed a grudge. Meanwhile, the murder of the third Kamakura shogun, Minamoto no Sanetomo, created turmoil in the realm. The last straw, so to speak, came when the new Kamakura powers put Juntoku’s son (Gotoba’s grandson) on the throne, the Chukyo Tenno, who was just two years old at the time. (His reign lasted only a few months, and he wasn’t recognized as being part of the official lineage until 1870, but it’s time to get back on the main line again.)

Gotoba decided that was more than enough for any man to put up with, even a poet with a harem, so he mounted a military campaign to restore authority to the Kyoto court. The campaign became known as the Jokyu Disturbance of 1221. The widow of the murdered shogun convinced most of the Kansai samurai that they would lose their special status if there was a regime change, however, so they fought on the shogunate’s side and won.

Instead of lopping off Gotoba’s head, they exiled him to Tajima in the Oki Islands, which are part of Shimane (as are the islets of Takeshima, but there I go again). In his post-Imperial career on the islands, Gotoba became devoted to waka poetry. He ordered the compilation of the Shin Kokinshu (The New Anthology of Ancient and Modern Waka), one of three major waka anthologies with the Manyoshu and the Kokin Wakashu, and served as an editor. He also became a well-known waka critic.

Meanwhile, back on the mainland, the Shogunate exiled his fourth son, Masanari (who had the same mother as Juntoku), to this elegant life of exile, most likely to prevent any more so-called disturbances. Masanari’s wife was pregnant at the time and didn’t follow him until after their child was born. It was a difficult childbirth, however, and she made the trip in poor physical condition. Along the way, she asked an old woman for directions–who sent her down the wrong road on purpose.

It took the poor woman so far out of her way—to Toyo’oka, in fact—that she lost hope of ever reaching her destination and threw herself into the Maruyama River and drowned.

And that’s how the festival started: twelve nearby Shinto shrines gave comfort to her spirit by burning the old woman in effigy on the banks of the Maruyama, a custom that continues to the present. They make a tower of straw and bamboo, erect a pine tree on top, tie a straw doll to the tree to represent the woman, and torch it.

The festival is officially known as the Oto Matsuri, but it’s popularly called the Babayaki Matsuri, and if you can think of a better translation than the Festival for Burning the Old Biddy, I’m all ears.

Ah, one last part. The matsuri is not just to pray for a good harvest—it’s also to drive away harmful insects! If you want to bring some matches to help and to have fantasies about your mother-in-law, the festival is held in mid-April.

The death and resurrection of a Japanese festival

FOR A SUPERB DEMONSTRATION of just how much traditional Shinto festivals mean to the Japanese, look no further than the recent success of the people in a small district in Saeki, Oita. The outflow of young people from the area over the years has left only 3,030 people living there now, of which 390 are aged 65 or older. That gives the district an elderly population of 38%, much higher than the already high rate of 26% for Oita as a whole.

The lack of able bodies forced the local Hayasuhime Shinto shrine to discontinue the Gojinkosai, its annual summer festival, four years ago. An additional complication was that the main event required volunteers with a high testosterone count—it was a particularly fierce fighting festival, and as long-time friends know, Japanese fighting festivals can be fierce indeed. Matsuri of this sort often involve groups of men smashing portable Shinto shrines known as mikoshi into each other, usually with the intent of driving the other group into a river or smashing their mikoshi altogether. Sometimes in Shinto, rowdiness is next to godliness.

Saeki’s Gojinkosai required three mikoshi instead of the usual two, and to facilitate the bashing they lined up on a nearby beach. A photograph from the last festival, held in 2005, shows that all three mikoshi and their carriers wound up waist-deep in water.

The dwindling total of young people meant that the numbers no longer added up. A team of 30 people was needed for each mikoshi because all that mayhem required the participants to take turns due to fatigue. There are only 410 men in the district between the ages of 16 and 49, so almost 25% of them would have to participate every year.

But a group of diehards in that district refused to let the 850-year-old event fade away. Held in supplication for a good harvest, good fishing, and safety at sea, the festival also featured taiko drumming and a performance of the shishimai, or lion dance, in addition to the shrine-sanctioned brawling. Those who wanted to resume the festival successfully organized a local referendum in January. One faction in the district was content to let sleeping traditions lie; they said the economic downturn was an inappropriate time for such sportive rambunctiousness, much less for the eating, drinking, merriment, and more drinking that are essential elements of most matsuri. But the veneration of tradition and love of a good time prevailed, as the group which countered that an economic downturn was the perfect time for a festival carried the day and won the election.

Prevailing in the referendum was one thing, but rounding up the men to actually put their bodies on the line was another. How did they solve that problem?

They sent out a call to those young people who had moved away to return for the weekend and resuscitate the event. The heads of the four neighborhood associations went from door to door in their areas to ask the residents to ask their sons and grandsons to lend a helping hand and a sturdy shoulder to come home for the weekend and hoist the mikoshi for the old hometown.

Aided either by their persuasive abilities or a divine wind, the arm-twisting worked on a sufficient number of children and grandchildren to bring the Gojinkosai back to life this summer. To make it easier on the participants, the traditional festival date of 29 July was switched to the 26th, a Sunday. That will allow the mikoshi carriers sufficient time to travel and recover from their bumps and bruises for work the next day.

Some people think traditional culture in the modern world is a fragile heirloom that would wither and die without being propped up by bureaucrats and infusions of public funds. But as a small group in Saeki showed, all that’s required to keep alive the traditions people value is a bit of imagination and effort.

Matsuri da! (106): The Korean divinity at a Shinto shrine

SOLDIERS BRING HOME all sorts of souvenirs when they return from foreign battlefields—unusual rocks from uninhabited beaches, Luger pistols, hachimaki headbands, severed ears and other body parts, unpleasant diseases, and war brides speaking unfamiliar languages, to mention a few.

The kachigarasu

Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded the Korean Peninsula twice in the 1590s, and his staging area and jumping off point was located in what is now Chinzei-cho in Saga. He had the Nagoya Castle built there in just five months; after the Osaka Castle, it was the largest in Japan at the time. In those days, the area was part of the Nabeshima domain, ruled by Nabeshima Naoshige. A skilled military leader, Nabeshima’s epigrams and deeds were recorded in the classic samurai how-to manual Hagakure by Tsunetomo Yamamoto, an attendant of the daimyo’s grandson Mitsushige.

Nabeshima accompanied Toyotomi on his Korean excursions and brought back two unusual souvenirs. One was a type of black-and-white magpie known in Japanese as the kachigarasu, which is still found in Japan almost exclusively in Saga and Fukuoka.

Though the bird resembles the karasu, or the all-black crow that lives throughout Japan, it is of a different genus and species. The Koreans call it the kkachi, so the etymology is very clear. They like to nest in utility poles—there are probably some right now peering down on the street in my neighborhood—which gives the Kyushu Electric maintenance men a spring- and summer-long headache.

Nabeshima’s second war souvenir was a Korean ceramist named Lee Sam-pyeung, who arrived in 1598 and would later revolutionize ceramics production in Japan from his base in Arita, Saga. Because he couldn’t find the proper type of clay in the area to make the sophisticated Chinese/Korean type of porcelain already in demand in Southeast Asia and Europe, Lee initially worked with a group of 12 Korean ceramists to make what is known as Karatsu ware.

That changed in 1616, when Lee struck kaolin—the ceramist’s equivalent of gold—at Mt. Izumi in Arita. That’s where he built the first noborigama, or climbing kiln (sometimes called dragon kiln) in Japan required for firing fine porcelain. It was the first of two strokes of exceptional luck for the Japanese ceramics industry.

The second occurred when the Ming Dynasty in China collapsed in 1644. The European nobility and wealthy merchants were buying enormous quantities of Chinese porcelain, but the turmoil at dynasty’s end caused many kilns to shut down. Some were damaged in the battles between the dynasty and the Manchus. The succeeding Qing Dynasty government then stopped trade altogether from 1656 to 1684. The end of supply from China spurred the Dutch East India company to turn to Arita porcelain to fill the prodigious demand. The Dutch were the only foreigners allowed to maintain a presence in Japan at the time, and they had an office on Dejima, a small island off the city of Nagasaki. (Land reclamation operations later made it part of the city itself.) As a result, an enormous amount of porcelain was shipped from Arita to Europe from then until the mid-18th century.

Two factors drove this demand. The first was that in Europe in those days, porcelain was a beautiful and exotic rarity from distant places barely imaginable for most people. The first porcelain manufactured on the continent was in Meissen in 1709. The production techniques existed only in Asia, so porcelain items were considered treasures. Deliveries took several months over the Silk Road or in sailing ships. Some even thought porcelain had magical properties, and believed it would become discolored and crack if it came into contact with poison.

The second was that the only people who could afford to indulge themselves with porcelain purchases were the European and Ottoman Turkish nobility, and the wealthiest of the merchant class. The customer base may have been limited, but those customers had plenty of money to spend on whatever struck their fancy. Their passion for collecting became a mania that was almost degenerate in its profligacy. One German Elector traveled to the Amsterdam docks to buy immense quantities right off the ship. Their frenzy culminated in the creation of porcelain rooms, in which the entire chamber was filled with porcelain displays from floor to ceiling, and sometimes included the ceiling. The rooms often had mirrored walls to enhance the effect. A single room wasn’t enough for Augustus the Strong, the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. He built the Japanisches Palais in Dresden, a palace for holding and displaying the more than 20,000 pieces of Chinese and Japanese porcelain in his collection. (It was never used for that, however, and became a library instead.)

Though the huge shipments to Europe ended in the mid-18th century, Arita is still one of the premier ceramics-producing areas of Japan. Every year during the Golden Week holidays, a period in which five public holidays fall from 28 April to 5 May, the town holds a ceramics fair in which the entire business of the residents is given over to selling ceramics and porcelain from their storefronts or stalls in the street. That includes barber shops and cafes as well as the ceramics merchants and producers who do it for a living.

The 106th Arita ceramics fair ended last week, and this year 1.13 million visitors just as eager as the 17th century nobility to buy porcelain (for much cheaper prices) flocked to the town with a population of slightly more than 21,000 in an area of 27.09 square kilometers, 70% of which is wooded. It was the second-highest number of visitors in the history of the event, with the highest coming in 2003. It was also the seventh straight year that more than one million people came. The organizers thought the economic downturn and fears of influenza would depress attendance, but a special discount on expressway tolls during the holidays in conjunction with the introduction of a new electronic toll collection system seems to have encouraged people to make the trip.

Shinto festivals have long been held to coincide with commercial events, and vice-versa, so it’s not unusual that the Tozan Shinto shrine in Arita-cho would hold one of their festivals on the 4th. The tutelary deity of the shrine, which is said to have been founded in 1658, is the Korean ceramist Lee Sam-pyeung. There is also a monument to Lee at the top of the mountain behind the shrine, where the ceremonies are usually held, but rain forced it indoors this year. About 100 people from Japan and South Korea were in the procession and witnessed a performance of kagura (Shinto dance), as shown in the photo.

One of those watching from South Korea was Kim Gi-hyeong of the South Korean Ceramics Culture Association. He said:

“We pledge to keep alive the pioneering and creative spirit of Lee, and bring forth a more beautiful friendship between South Korea and Japan.”

It’s curious that some people are so anxious to claim that the Japanese are either ignorant of or loath to honor the Korean contribution to their culture, and that other people are so ready to believe it. That means one of the many positive aspects of Japan-Korean relations they overlook or ignore is this Shinto shrine and event honoring a Korean ceramist who lived 400 years ago and whose life’s work and lucky strike still enrich everyone in the area today—which the Japanese readily acknowledge.

Here are two brief YouTube clips showing the shrine, with Japanese voiceovers. (Number one and number two) It’s Sunday night, and I’m not up for doing a transcription/translation, but they’re worth viewing even if you don’t know Japanese. Both show the unique ceramic installations at the shrine, including the underglaze blue (sometsuke in Japanese) on the torii. The first also includes shots of the monument to Lee.

The entire range of Arita ware is offered for sale during the fair at reduced prices. Those prices get progressively lower every day, so some rather attractive pieces can be bought rather inexpensively on the last day. The items sold include both the finest quality porcelain as well as leftover odds and ends. My first year in Japan, in 1984, I visited the fair and purchased for pocket change a surplus tea mug specially produced to commemorate the anniversary of a small Shinto shrine elsewhere in Kyushu. It was sitting in a crate along with some other remainders. Now it’s sitting on my desk, and I still use it to drink tea.

Matsuri da! (105): The festival for manly men

DESPITE THE INTENSE COMPETION that is often part of Shinto festivals, which can range from events resembling ad hoc sporting events to those that look like shrine-authorized street rumbles, few of the matsuri have a martial air. One exception is the yabusame festivals, during which archers mounted on galloping horses fire arrows at targets as they race by.

A manly man and his manly men

Another exception is the Lord Shingen Festival, one of the largest in Kofu, Yamanashi. That annual event is held in early April near the anniversary of that manly man’s death on the 12th. The event honors the life and times of the local daimyo, Shingen Takeda, who was quite the 16th century warlord and the city’s founder. He strutted his ruthless stuff during the bloody Warring States period in Japanese history, which means he didn’t fight by Marquis of Queensbury rules. He reached the top by knocking off his predecessor—his father—and then spent the rest of his 52 years war-gaming for real through various military campaigns.

We don’t know whether it was the genes or the Yamanashi water, but Shingen’s eldest son was a chip off the old block who plotted to accelerate his own succession. Dad, having traveled down that road himself, sensed what was afoot and had the lad confined to quarters. Number one son died under mysterious circumstances two years later. Perhaps he should have considered himself lucky. When Shingen discovered a similar plot by his cousin, he ordered the man to cut his belly open on the spot.

Shingen is sometimes referred to as The Tiger of Kai for his mastery of the battlefield, Kai being the name of his ‘hood in those days. But the daimyo had a sensitive side as well, and during his youth he was known for writing excellent poetry.

Kofu spares no effort to recreate his history in its 450-year time slip to those glorious days of yesteryear, when the warriors were brave, courageous, and bold manly men. Replicas of furinkazan, Lord Shingen’s personal flag, are hung throughout the town during the event. The festival is a two-day affair that kicks off with a parade featuring a brass band, musical performances, and a fireworks exhibition. There are also special readings for parents and children of folk tales in which Shingen plays a prominent role, and a lecture titled Takeda Shingen and His Times. The organizers offer a walking tour of local sites associated with the lord that passes through the remnants of the Takeda shrine. Visitors tuckered out after all that walking can relax free of charge at a local hot spring facility. And because the event takes place in early April, they can appreciate the beauty of the cherry blossoms at the former Shingen residence. Perhaps some of them are moved to write poetry of their own.

But the real fun begins on the second and final day. Around 11:00 a.m., twenty-four mounted horsemen wearing the battle dress of Takeda’s generals are joined at Takeda shrine by 1,600 local men dressed as samurai infantry in period costumes, as well as performers of the Shingen dance. They march through the center of Kofu bearing torches and hauling cannon on what is now called Heiwa-dori (Peace Street), just as the proudly non-pacific Shingen and his army did before pushing off for the Battle of Kawanakajima. Along the way, they meet up with a procession of wheeled floats. During the course of the parade, the mounted samurai gallop from Kofu City Hall to the train station. The entire procession stops by the old Takeda Shinto shrine to pray for victory. The festival’s climax occurs in a riverbed at Isawa Kawanakajima during a recreation of the 1561 battle in which Shingen defeated Uesugi Kenshin. The latter was known as the Dragon of Echigo, which suggests that he was a manly man as well, despite his defeat.

Stout-hearted lads they all must have been, but Lord Shingen was no shrinking violet it came to expressing his tender side. The historical archives of the University of Tokyo contain a written love pact signed by Shingen and Kosaka Masanobu, a boy of 16. As part of the love pledge—a samurai pre-nup?—the 22-year-old Shingen swears that he hasn’t and will not dally with another, specifically-named retainer. He also promises that he won’t harm the boy since his intent is a sexual relationship. (This information is derived from Gary Leupp’s Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan.)

Relationships of this sort were common among the manly samurai for several centuries, which presents an interesting parallel with ancient Greece. Some men even encouraged the practice, in part for the benefits that accrued to the younger partners, as they were supposedly given instruction in virtue and the appreciation of beauty. (Another possibility was that it was a workable justification for the seduction of a comely youth.) Thus, as in ancient Greece, the relationship combined the way of the warrior with cultural development. In contrast, some manly men claimed that the love for women caused men to become more feminine. (You could have fooled me, but then again a teenaged boy wouldn’t start bugging his patron to lift up the toilet seat and take out the trash.)

The famous Hagakure, the how-to book for samurai written by Yamamoto Tsunetomo in the early 18th century, even provides some advice for samurai man-boy love:

“A young man should test an older man for at least five years, and if he is assured of that person’s intentions, then he too should request the relationship… If the younger man can devote himself and get into the situation for five or six years then it will not be unsuitable.”

The Japanese term for this practice is wakashudo, sometimes shortened to shudo. Waka is the word for young, shu can sometimes mean companions, and do means way or path. The younger men in the relationship were called wakashu, while the older men were known as nenja. That word is composed of nen, which combines the senses of solicitude, desire, and attention, and one of the words for person.

Those familiar with things Japanese will have already picked up that this practice was thought to be a do, in the same way that budo is the way of the warrior. The same kanji also crops up in kendo, kyudo, judo, aikido, and even Shinto.

Kendo literally means the way of the sword. Perhaps wakashudo represented a different form of swordsmanship!

Afterwords: Some of the information on waksashudo came from this website. The creator asks that this form of citation be used: Andrew Calimach, World History of Male Love, “Homosexual Traditions”, The Beautiful Way of the Samurai, 2000. There you go. The site is well done and has links that are worth following, so I’ve added it to the right sidebar. The link to the Hagakure is already there.

The author of the first website suggests that the influence of Western Christian ideas conveyed through missionaries and after the Meiji Restoration, “a direct result of the opening of Japan carried out under the threat of American guns in 1854”, spelled the end of wakashudo. I’m not sure I agree. Some say that prostitution was outlawed for (ultimately) the same reasons, but men today interested in purchasing those services won’t have any trouble finding them. The same cannot be said of wakashudo, though men of any country today with means, power, and those sexual preferences are probably able to indulge themselves just as easily as Lord Shingen.

Update: My passing reference to yabusame drew some interest, and reader Tomojiro sent along this Youtube clip of a BBC report on the art/discipline. Give credit where credit is due: there’s a lot of worthwhile information and video, and it’s light on the snark. Thanks Tomojiro!

The lightness of being in Kyoto

ONE THING FOR CERTAIN about the Japanese is that they love a good light show, particularly those involving traditional lanterns. Some of them are spectacular in appearance, such as the Chinese Lantern Festival in Nagasaki in February and March and the Rokugatsudo in Kagoshima in July. Others are spectacular in performance, as you can see from these posts on as the Kanto Festival in Akita in August and the chochin fighting festival in Hyogo in October.

Yet there are others that eschew the spectacular for an elegant sense of refinement. One of those events is the Kyoto-Higashiyama Hanatoro (literally flower lantern road), which began on the evening of the 13th in Kyoto’s Higashiyama Ward and ended tonight. The idea is simple: 2,400 andon, which are really more lamp stand than lantern, are set up along both sides of the road from Shoren-in, a Buddhist temple (whose head priests years ago were members of the Imperial family), to Kiyomizu-dera, another temple 4.6 kilometers (2.85 miles) away, to create a lovely, atmospheric walking course. The andon are made from a variety of materials, including Kiyomizu ware, bamboo, cedar, stone, and metal. They’re lit after six to create the mood, which is evident from the photo, and they’re extinguished at about 9:30.

The course passes a total of eight temples or Shinto shrines, all of which are specially illuminated for the occasion. They also allow visits at night, which is normally not the case at the temples.

Those who want to commemorate their walk may do so by being one of the first 100 to arrive at the Yasaka Shinto shrine. The early evening birds get to have their picture taken with dancing girls (of the traditional sort, not the ones who dance on laps).

Considering the age of the city and its religious institutions, one might think the flower lantern road is a centuries-old tradition that was once enjoyed by the nobility. In fact, however, it is very recent: it was started in 2003 with the objective of attracting more people to the neighborhood after dark. Even the local organizers must have been surprised just how successful the event would become, and just how quickly that success would arrive. Five years later, an estimated one million people showed up just to take a stroll in the Kyoto evening by candlelight.

In a world that seems to grow coarser and more willfully Philistine by the day, it is reassuring to know that so many still respond to quiet, understated beauty when the opportunity is available.