Bait and switch

NOW THAT the Japanese electorate has unwittingly jumped from the frying pan into the fire by selecting the country’s Democratic Party to lead a government, people are starting to get scorched. Everyone knew before the election that the DPJ’s principal talents were obstructionism and harangues more suited for postgraduate seminars and smoky union halls than a legislature, but people held their noses and voted for them anyway. Entropy had finally had its way with the Liberal Democratic Party, and that party’s mudboat wing stepped up to the challenge by committing the de facto equivalent of hara-kiri.

By trying to implement a platform whose individual provisions never polled all that well and won’t work well at all, the new government is making manifest its shallowness, petit authoritarianism, and disregard of anything outside its self-interest.

From the Mainichi Shimbun

The vernacular edition of the newspaper carried a story that described a chilly conversation last week between Sengoku Yoshito, the Minister of State for Administrative Reform, and Nagatsuma Akira, the Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare.

Mr. Sengoku initiated the conversation about the JPY 12.4 billion-program for one-time payments of JPY 36,000 to parents of children aged 3-5. That program was started by the Aso Administration at the behest of its New Komeito coalition partners. The payments were supposed to have been made by the end of the year.

The Mainichi quoted Mr. Sengoku as telling Mr. Nagatsuma:

“The special child support allowance was begun by New Komeito, so it has to be cut”.

He also said this was a “Cabinet decision”, though why Mr. Nagatsuma—a Cabinet member—was not present when the decision was made was not explained.

The program was a likely candidate for the axe anyway, because it was adopted to please the former government’s junior coalition partner and to deflect attention from the DPJ’s more extensive child subsidy proposal before the election. That alone doesn’t explain the antagonism, however.

What does? Despite sharing a similar political outlook, the DPJ has shown no interest in bringing New Komeito into their ruling coalition. Indeed, they’ve gone out of their way to harass them in the Diet. They’d rather try to reconcile the irreconcilable paleo-old guard of the PNP and the viperous left of the Social Democrats and govern as if they were in a four-legged race.

That’s because the DPJ’s Shadow Shogun, Ozawa Ichiro, has detested New Komeito for years. If the Mainichi report that this was a Cabinet decision is true, now we know who’s making decisions for the Cabinet.

For an insight into the inscrutability of Japanese politics, by the way, Mr. Sengoku is considered to be an Ozawa opponent within the party.

In the end, the Government canceled the program and held a press conference to “apologize to the people and local governments.”

No one was mollified.

From the Asahi Shimbun

The Aichi Prefecture Mayors’ Conference was held last week in Nagoya, their first meeting since the new government took office. All but one of the prefecture’s 35 mayors attended. The mayors passed a resolution asking the Government to assume full financial liability for the DPJ’s own child allowance proposal, as per their political platform, instead of sticking local governments and the private sector with part of the bill. Some participants complained that the DPJ’s ineptitude is causing turmoil in local government.

Said Inuyama Mayor Tanaka Yukinori (affiliated with the opposition LDP):

“The ministers just jump the gun with these statements, without specifying what is wasteful and what was wrong about the previous expenditures.”

Here’s Toyota Mayor Suzuki Kohei on the work his his city already performed for the Aso Administration policy:

“Our efforts wound up being a waste of time and money. (Some municipalities had to hire temporary employees.) When (the Government) says, ‘We’re a new administration,’ some local governments think that’s an insufficient reason or explanation.”

The sentiments were echoed by Aichi Gov. Kanda Masaaki, a guest at the meeting:

“There is uneasiness and turmoil in the communities. I’m going to do everything I can to hold local conferences to convey our concerns to the government.”

From the Nihonkai Shimbun

Tottori Gov. Hirai Shinji was even more scathing. At a press conference on the 15th, he said:

“The people ordered kabayaki (grilled eel), but they were served up something already eaten alive by a viper.”

In reference to the new Government’s inability to deal with the Finance Ministry bureaucrats, Mr. Hirai noted:

“Whenever the Finance Ministry says anything, they just swallow it whole and keep putting it on the tab of local government. Nothing at all has changed. In fact, it’s gotten worse.”

It might be that local governments could be a more effective check than the nominal opposition party, the LDP, which seems to be missing in action at the national level.

Then again, the Hatoyama Administration isn’t in the mood to listen, regardless of the number of conferences Aichi Gov. Kanda holds.

On television

On the 18th, Deputy Finance Minister Noda Yoshihiko reiterated that the Government is still considering having local governments and businesses cough up some of the money for their child allowance scheme.

Bait-and-switch, inflexibility, and policies that smack of Mussolini-style corporative fascism are no way to run a government, son.

Let’s reduce reliance on the bureaucracy by expanding it!

Back to Sengoku Yoshito, the Minister for Administrative Reform, who also appeared on TV on the 18th touting his latest reform idea. He wants to reorganize Mr. Nagatsuma’s MHLW:

“Its jurisdiction is so broad in scope that the problems arising there every day come up nowhere else.”

The Aso Administration was also interested in reorganizing the ministry last May, but, as with the Aso Administration itself, nothing came of it.

His proposal would seem to be hypocritical for a party that co-opted local reformers by promising to disassociate from the bureaucracy, and then changed its tune to disassociating from a reliance on the bureaucracy once they took office.

Instead, he suggests creating three new Cabinet ministries, each with a name that only the left could dream up:

• The Ministry of Children and Families
• The Ministry of Education and Employment
• The Ministry of Social Insurance

The LDP had the capital idea of privatizing the Social Insurance Agency, but the agency itself torpedoed that plan by leaking the news of the colossal, decade-long foul-up of pension records. (All the more reason to privatize, is it not?) Then-DPJ-head Ozawa Ichiro said it should be merged with the National Tax Agency.

But now the DPJ is the party in power. Now they want to make it into a ministry of its own.

The idea behind coupling education with employment was that the Education Ministry, which also includes culture, sports, science, technology, and God knows what-all, was another candidate for reorganization. Mr. Sengoku did not explain why there was a need to end one Rube Goldberg bureaucracy just to create another. Nor was any justification provided for the existence of full-fledged Cabinet ministries focusing on labor, children, or families; it was as if no justification were needed.

In other words, Mr. Sengoku’s idea of governmental reform is to create three useless ministries where one existed and none are needed. Yes, let’s not rely on bureaucrats any more. As if that weren’t enough, he also said he was going to think of other ways to efficiently reorganize the central government.

Well, what sort of administrative reform can one expect from a former labor lawyer who was first elected to the Diet as a member of the Socialist Party? Did anyone really think he was going to consider central government downsizing?

Here’s another one on the inscrutability of Japanese politics: Mr. Sengoku is affiliated with the DPJ’s Maehara-Edano group/faction, which is considered to be on the Right within the party.

Meanwhile…

People outside of Japan are starting to draw conclusions about the new government, particularly those in financial circles.

Phill Tomlinson thinks stagflation will continue:

Many Keynesian economists are still baffled by Japan. Over the years, policy after policy has been proposed by their school of thought, all of which involve some form of government action, but time and time again they all seem to fail. The classic Keynesian rebuttal whenever these policies fail is “Well, the authorities didn’t do enough”. Just like they apparently didn’t do enough during the Great Depression.

And:

The reason why they never recovered to their previous highs was exactly what the Government did, they took over and tried the command economy approach. Roads to nowhere, propping up banks that were insolvent, not allowing private enterprise to take over the means of production. Rather than money going into the private sector, Japanese savings that were accrued during their economic miracle were funneled into Government bonds, wasteful Government consumption. It was quite simply a classic stagflation that is still ongoing.

That was published on the same day it was reported the Government would try to prop up debt-ridden Japan Airlines by putting its ownership in the hands of a quasi-public corporation without having it go through bankruptcy.

Meet the new boss.

Even worse than the old boss.

Matsuri da! (104): Signs of spring in Toyohashi

PEOPLE THE WORLD OVER have rituals and customs to celebrate the arrival of spring, the season when the flowers bloom, the chicks hatch, and a young man’s fancy turns to you-know-what. Japan of course is no exception, but instead of maypole dancing or binge drinking in Ft. Lauderdale, the Japanese have traditionally heralded the annual rising of the sap with a cornucopia of Shinto festivals.

One of those is the Oni Matsuri (Ogre Festival), which was held on 10 and 11 February by the Akumi Kanbe Shinto shrine in Toyohashi, Aichi. Yes, February does seem a little early, but we’re talking the lunar calendar here.

It is one of those events the Japanese refer to as a kisai, or unusual festival, which means that they consider it a bit offbeat even by their standards. Then again, they’re used to the odd goings-on—the festival is more than 1,000 years old and has been designated an important intangible cultural treasure of the nation. It is offered in supplication for a bountiful harvest and protection from illness and disaster.

The festival itself is a reenactment of an old myth in which a divinity is fond of playing practical jokes on the people. That divinity is confronted by another in a battle, and the joker eventually repents the error of his ways. Instead of divinities, the parts in the Toyohashi festival are played by an ogre and a tengu (a goblin of sorts).

The initial events occur on the night of 10 February, when there is a performance of the iwato-no-mai, or dance of the (opening of the) rock cave. This is one of the kagura, or ceremonial dances to please the divinities, and is also based on mythology. The performers are about 50 local junior high school students dressed as blue ogres, and who dance to the accompaniment of flutes and drums. When the performance is finished, they and some shrine parishioners toss out tankiri ame, a type of boiled confection, to the crowd while emitting loud growls. They also sprinkle white powder over the crowd, which is supposed to protect them from bad fortune.

The main event with the red demon and the tengu follows the next day, and their confrontation is described as bantering. Before that, however, some Shinto events are conducted in the shrine, and then there is a performance of the dengaku, a dance in celebration of the harvest. During one of the scenes, the red demon, whose big thrill is spoiling the grain harvest, appears at the shrine and leaps about comically. He is confronted by the tengu, representing the god of military arts, and challenges him to a battle, but the tengu finally drives the demon out of the shrine grounds. Overjoyed by his victory, the tengu also performs a kagura.

The red demon sees the error of his ways and repents. To atone for his transgressions, he sweeps through the town handing out more tankiri ame. Meanwhile, back the shrine, a group of young people shout “a-ka-i” (red) and dump so much white powder on the onlookers that it hangs in the air like smoke from a fire.

The whole scene doesn’t sound like much more than a 1,000-year-old comic sketch, but 60,000 people show up every year to see the performance and get covered by the powder. The more powder that clings to you, the better the protection will be.

Maybe in Toyohashi, powder in the air is a sign that spring is in the air!

Matsuri da! (89): You art what you eat!

THE INTRODUCTION OF WET PADDY rice cultivation some 2,000 years ago defined the Japanese nation. Growing rice was once considered a religious act, in which the spirit of the rice plant was invoked. It required labor-intensive farming, advanced water control systems, and the combined effort of the greater community. That created the environment in which the traditional extended family system evolved.

Until modern times, the rice crop was the standard used for managing land and levying taxes. The word for cooked rice itself is synonymous with a meal; the other foods served with it, even expensive beefsteak, are considered o-kazu, or side dishes.

Children in the region where I live are sent on field trips at least once during their school career to plant rice by hand. Dressed in gym class t-shirts and shorts, they slosh around in the wet rice paddy in bare feet to find out first hand how to place the seedlings in the mud to make sure they don’t fall over. What better way to understand the work required to put their daily bowl of rice on the table?

The Daijosai, sometimes translated as the Great Food Offering Ritual, is the third of three ceremonies through which a new tenno (emperor) ascends the throne. The preparations include an ancient divination technique to select consecrated paddies for growing the rice to be used. It is cultivated using ritual procedures, and when harvested is sent by special minister to the ceremony site. The tenno offers this rice to the sun goddess Amaterasu and other divinities before eating it himself to partake in spiritual communion with them.

“You are what you eat” is a concept as old as humankind and has been incorporated in religious worship throughout the world. The Catholics believe in the concept of transubstantiation, in which the bread and wine of the Eucharist are changed into the body and blood of Jesus. Believers partake of this on Sunday mornings, after confessing their sins on Saturday.

And that’s how the Japanese came to believe that the tenno was a living god.

June is the month for planting rice in Japan, and the start of the season is celebrated by hundreds of rice-planting festivals everywhere in the country.

One is the Yukisaiden Otaue Matsuri held on the 1st in Okazaki, Aichi, shown in the first photo below. The first festival was for planting the rice used in the Daijosai of the Taisho tenno, the current tenno’s grandfather. The song, dance, tools, and clothing used in the ceremony have been designated intangible folk cultural treasures of the city

Members of a local preservation society and sixth-graders in primary school trooped into the fields to plant 2,500 rice stalks by the traditional method as they sang a local rice-planting song. Girls or young women are usually the ones to do the ceremonial planting, and the language even has a special word for them: saotome.

All the rice planted was of the same Banzai variety used in the Daijosai 90 years ago. The rice was derived from the leftovers a local farmer discovered in his farmhouse in 2005.

Sometimes the planters work to a song or musical accompaniment. The 23 saotome in the Suwa Taisha Shinto shrine festival in Suwa, Nagano, however, plant the seedlings on signals from a foreman. These saotome are in their teens and 20s and were selected to represent each district served by the shrine. The harvested rice will be offered at the Niinamesai, the Shinto harvest festival, in November.

All 33 saotome in the festival held in Goshogawara, Aomori, on the 16th were high school seniors. A local high school conducts the festival every year, rather than a Shinto shrine. The girls wear clothing made by predecessors who did the planting 10 years ago. It looks like comfort was their primary consideration.

It required 55 saotome from local junior high and high schools for the Taga Taisha shrine festival in Taga-cho, Shiga, however. The girls received the rice plants at the shrine and proceeded to the paddy. After they arrived, miko, or shrine maidens, ritually purified the paddy with hot water. Only 32 of the girls did the planting, while the rest performed the dances and songs. The rice will be harvested in September at the Nuibosai ceremony and offered for consecration in November at the Niinamesai.

Meanwhile, it took only five saotome to do the planting in Maeda Toshiharu’s 200-square-meter paddy in Torahime-cho, Shiga, but the rice will still be sent to the tenno as an offering. Here the miko performed the ceremonial dance and the first ceremonial plowing before the high school girls did the dirty work.

The festival of the Tsumakirishima shrine down south in Miyakonojo, Miyazaki, was held on the 7th with 12-grade girls serving as the saotome. This event started sometime during the Edo period (1603-1868), but stopped in 1940 because of World War II. The older folks in Miyakonojo remembered how much they enjoyed it, however, so they decided to start it up again in 1989. It’s been an annual event ever since.

Here they use a special variety of red rice. Not all rice is brown—there are 1,500 varieties in Japan, and some of them come in different colors. It’s a veritable rainbow coalition of cereal diversity. There are even varieties of black rice, which my wife and I add to the genmai (brown rice) we eat for dinner. We mix it because the black rice is gummy and sticky and not ideal for eating by itself. I tried it once, and it didn’t work out well. Cleaning the rice cooker afterward wasn’t so appealing, either.

One saotome said the festival was a lot of fun because she enjoyed the sensation of her bare feet squishing in the warm mud. I wonder if that was the girl smiling for the camera. Hi there!

Miyakonojo’s festival was suspended during the war and didn’t get restarted until almost 50 years later, but the Hikamianego Shinto shrine in Nagoya has kept theirs going since 1933 without a break. Legend has it that this shrine was established in 195 and moved to its present location in 690. Note that those dates have only three digits.

The 10 saotome working in the shrine’s sacred paddy aren’t schoolgirls, but flesh-and-blood farming folk or employees of the local agricultural cooperative. The report says they sing a planting song as they work. They do resemble a chorus line, come to think of it.

The festival of the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine in Kyoto is well known throughout the country for being photogenic, even though it is relatively recent—it started in 1948. It was held on the 10th, with girls performing the o-tamai (rice paddy dance) as both men and women handled the planting.

The rice will be harvested in another Nuibosai festival and offered to the divinities. Reports say the festival mood is solemn. Those folks up on the wall do look like a serious bunch, don’t they? That’s the o-temai the girls are doing.

The local farmers also play an important role in the Nitta Shrine festival in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima, as they swing bamboo sticks called yakko in a ritual to drive away the insects. Here the planting is done by 24 men and women, this year in the rain, as they sing a rice planting song.

Singing in the rain! Whistling while they work! Swatting insects with bamboo sticks!

The Tashibunosho district of Bungotakada, Oita, looks remarkably like a farming village in the Japanese middle ages. Their planting festival was held on the 8th by the Usa Jingu shrine. It started with a Shinto ceremony and was followed by 150 planters taking care of business, with the paddy’s owner and students from Beppu University helping the saotome.

They start planting when Buddhist priests from the Fuki-ji temple give them the high sign by blowing on conch shells. This is an example of ecumenism Japanese style—many Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples once shared the same facilities, and the Usa Jingu and Fuki-ji were a combined operation as far back as the 12th century.

This one’s not such a solemn affair. It starts with a comical sketch of a cow dummy and a herder in the paddy. The cow gets stuck in the mud and falls over, and later runs amok to avoid the work. Perhaps she didn’t care for her bare hooves squishing in the mud.

The miko do all the work at the 300-year-old festival of the Yutoku Inari shrine in Kashima, Saga. They serve as the saotome to plant the rice, perform the o-taue dance, and provide the musical accompaniment with clappers and flute. Maybe they ought to think about organizing a union.

This rice is also harvested at a Nuibosai festival, and some of it will be made into sake for the Niinamesai.

The high school girls are back as the saotome in Mitoyo, Kagawa, for the festival conducted by the Hokohachiman-gu shrine. This event is nearly 100 years old, and the rice will be used for a December Niinamesai. They alternate the use of private paddies, and this year’s field was chosen as the lucky one for the first time in nearly 50 years. Crop rotation with a long lead time makes it easy on the local farmers.

Instead of an o-temai, they perform a lion dance, or shishimai, to the accompaniment of taiko drums

You can be serious and still have fun, as this event held last Saturday demonstrates. The planting in Himeji, Hyogo, was not part of an old Shinto ritual. It was to create rice paddy art using eight rice varieties with different colors. Viewing the paddy from above after the rice plants grow will reveal a picture of the Himeji Castle. The 1.6-hectare rice paddy covers nearly as much ground as the castle itself.

About 100,000 rice plants were used for the planting, which took three days to finish. On the first day, 340 people turned out and used a diagram to plant the different strains in just the right spots. Pointillism in agriculture.

The castle is slated to undergo major repairs this fall. The chairman of the organizing committee said they conducted the event not only to promote tourism, but also to reeducate area residents about food and farming.

The paddy castle magic will be best seen in mid-July, and the prime view is from Mt. Shosha, which has a convenient ropeway for carrying people to the summit.

Is this another take on “you art what you eat”? Or is it art you can eat?

Matsuri da! (88): Well, it almost looks like a Christmas tree!

THE USE OF CANDLES to decorate Christmas trees is said to date from the early 16th century, when Martin Luther placed them on a small tree for his children to represent the stars at night. (The candles were placed inside of small holders—the man didn’t want to burn his house down!)

The custom spread throughout Germany, then to England, and from there to the U.S. Electric lights were eventually used to replace the candles on the modern Christmas tree, but here’s a custom in Japan, albeit in the spring, that maintains the lit candle and tree motif.

The decoration in the photo is called a yamazao chochin, which translates literally as mountain-pole-lantern, and yes, the candles inside each one of those lanterns is lit. (Except for a few at the top, which seem to have fallen victim to the wind, but let’s not be ungenerous.)

It was set up last month at the Yasaka Shinto shrine in Nagoya’s Nishi Ward during the annual Chochin Festival. Hung from the pole-mountain are 880 lanterns. That number was borrowed from the number 88, which is an important milestone among birthday celebrations in Japan. (The word for it is beiju, which is a combination of the characters for rice and long life.)

Naturally, the festival is held in supplication for a long life, but the parishioners also ask for a good harvest–of rice, or any other crop–while they’re at it.

The pole itself is about 20 meters high, and there are five levels of lanterns. The bottom level spreads out for about 10 meters horizontally. Each of the levels, you’ll notice, is in the shape of an octagon. The yamazao chochin just stands there during the day, but at 6:30 in the evening, the lanterns are lowered to light the candles inside and then raised again.

The origins of the shrine in the area date from 1185, but the building at the present location was erected in 1702, when this particular festival also became popular.

It’s a lot of work lighting all those candles (and keeping them from blowing out), but shrine sources say that’s not the worst of it. The number of households around the shrine is dwindling, as are the number of local artisans with the skills to make those lanterns, so it’s becoming more difficult to keep the festival going each year.

Let’s hope they don’t go all modern on us and switch to electric light instead!

Incidentally, this isn’t even the biggest or the most-well known of Nagoya’s lantern festivals. That one, the Dai Chochin Matsuri (Great Lantern Festival) is a really big show, as they used to say, with lanterns that themselves are 10 meters high. That’s held at the end of August in Isshiki, just outside Nagoya, so we’ll talk more about that one later.

Matsuri da! (73): Climbing up the greasy pole!

IF ANYONE STILL HARBORED ANY DOUBTS about the richness of the Japanese imagination when it comes to festival rites, the Kinekosa Festival held jointly by seven Shinto shrines in Nagoya should dispel them. More than 1,000 years old, the festival is held to drive away evil spirits and pray for the prosperity of one’s descendants, peace, and a good harvest. The festival date is January 17 according to the lunar calendar, which fell on February 23rd this year.

The main event does involve loincloth-clad men getting dunked in cold water in the middle of winter, which is a common occurrence in Japanese festivals, but the Kinekosa Festival has a fascinating twist—or perhaps bend is the more accurate word. Ten men, all 42 years old, and two boys stick a 10-meter long bamboo pole into the river. Then, one of group skinnies up the pole. The direction in which the pole falls predicts the fortune for that part of Nagoya in the year ahead.

This year, the climb was complicated by strong winds, but that wasn’t enough to put a damper on the proceedings. Luck was with them, as the pole fell to the southeast, the best possible direction for good fortune.

This site is all in Japanese, but that won’t stop you from looking at the photographs and a three-minute video of the event. Click on the arrow just as if it were YouTube. If you have the sound turned on, you can hear the wind blowing into the mike. Watching the pole climber take his good old time getting set, I could imagine the other participants thinking to themselves, “Let’s get a move on!”

But they probably didn’t. Part of their preparations for the event included three consecutive early-morning cold water baths for purification!

Matsuri da! (72): Ridding the world of evil with fire

SPRING CLEANING FOR MOST PEOPLE involves washing the windows and cleaning the house to get ready for warm weather. For some people, however, spring cleaning is a time to drive away the demons for spiritual renewal—and they’ve been reenacting the ritual for more than 900 years.

That’s what happens at the Takisan-ji Oni Matsuri, or the Demon Festival of the Takisan Buddhist temple, which was held in Okazaki, Aichi, on the 16th. The festival is held close to 7 February, which was the old lunar New Year. Apart from the spectacle, the festival is also noteworthy for two reasons. First, it is held at a Buddhist temple–unlike most Japanese festivals, which are associated with Shinto shrines. And second, it was started by one of the first shoguns, Minamoto no Yoritomo.

That was early in the Kamakura period (1185—1333), when he had established what is now known as the Kamakura Shogunate. He offered prayers in supplication for peace and a bountiful harvest. That later evolved into ceremonies in which large torches are used to expel demons.

This is not a game played with matchsticks. The ceremonies date from a time when people believed in evil and demons, and knew that strong measures were required to keep them away. In this case, it means noise, movement, and a lot of fire. Contemporary humankind may have evolved into an affable domesticated herd, but the intensity of a more primitive—and more compelling–version of ourselves survives here.

Several ceremonies are conducted as part of the overall event, but the one that attracts the most interest is the Fire Festival. The temple lights are extinguished and three demons wearing masks representing a grandfather, grandmother, and grandchild enter the corridor of the main hall. The role of the grandfather is played by a 42-year-old man, the grandmother by a 25-year-old man, and the grandchild by a 12-year-old boy.

Then, about 50 men clad in white appear. They are all born in one of the years that corresponds to the current year of the Chinese zodiac, which this year is the Year of the Rat. Clutching 2.5 meter-long torches, they swing them about wildly while performing a frenzied dance in the darkness to drive out the evil spirits. They have inherited the spirit of their ancestors, for whom failure in this enterprise was not an option.

The sheer length of traditions that have been maintained in Japan is a constant source of wonder. Minamoto no Yoritomo ruled during the final years of the 12th century. He was a contemporary of Richard the Lion-Hearted. Takisan-ji was already a venerable institution when he started the festival–the building’s foundations date to the latter half of the 7th century. The story goes that a priest who had been living as a hermit in the mountains nearby built the temple on the orders of the Emperor Tenmu, who reigned from 673 to 686 AD.

Though Minamoto-no-Yoritomo might be unfamiliar as a name to people outside of Japan, the image of the man himself is not. Here’s a link to his picture; reproductions of this scroll are sold as wall decorations in the West.

And here’s what he wrought: someone captured this year’s festival on YouTube, which you can see here. Both the images and the sound are slightly blurred, but that only serves to emphasize just how powerful the effect of either witnessing or taking part in this festival must be.

Thanks to Ponta for the link!

Kenji Yanobe: Some dare call it art

DEFINING AN ARTIST used to be easy—they painted pictures or carved sculptures. Some people consider Kenji Yanobe to be an artist, but he neither paints pictures nor carves sculptures. Instead, he makes things and creates installations. He sometimes refers to himself as a welder. Regardless of whether or not you think this is artistry—and some of Yanobe’s own patrons don’t—it’s fascinating to examine his creations, if only to know that somewhere on the planet there is someone actually doing these things.

Yanobe has tended to the pretentious and quirky since the start of his career. One of his earliest works was The Atom Suit. He created this bright yellow outfit, complete with Geiger Counter, for post-atomic survival. To his credit, it was not merely a gesture: Yanobe wore the suit himself to explore the area around the area near Chernobyl in Russia. He also created the Survival Gacha-Pon, which he calls the last automated vending machine in history. Customers inserted their money to receive a “survival goods capsule”.

He has described some of his works as sculpture. One was created with fashion designer Issey Miyake and is called Queen Mamma. It’s a dressing room designed as a womb. Yanobe is also capable of displaying his ego, too, as shown by Antenna of the Earth. Based on the artist’s studies of classical Buddhist sculpture, it is a life-sized figure of Yanobe as savior standing in the middle of 300 miniature Atom Suits. Emerging from the figure’s open mouth is another Atom Suit about the size of a pea.

Cinema in the Woods

A common thread running through many of these works is their functionality. This is art that can actually be entered or operated. One work that combined Yanobe’s themes–survival in an atomic age, functionality, and weirdness–was the Cinema in the Woods. This is a small movie theater for children built to resemble a mountain hut, complete with chairs, table, and small movie screen inside. It also was built with steel walls so it could serve as a fallout shelter.

Torayan

This is where he really starts sailing close to the edge. Yanobe’s father took up ventriloquism and performed at his son’s exhibitions with a dummy named Naniwa no Torayan. The dummy was conceived as half child, half middle-aged man. It has a child’s face, but a combover hairstyle and a short moustache. Torayan was originally dressed in the uniform of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team, hence his name (Tora is tiger in Japanese.)

Yanobe liked the character’s potential so much he made it the central figure in Cinema in the Woods. There were several Torayans in the hut. One was hidden under the table, one was placed in a tub on the roof, and another was stationed in front of the hut, dressed in a mini Atom Suit, of course. When the Geiger Counter detected radiation, Torayan danced and sang an old Polish folk song called Let’s Go to the Forest. The movie shown at the Cinema in the Woods was called The World of Torayan, in which Yanobe’s father used the dummy to teach ventriloquism. Inserted in the middle of the movie was a cartoon interlude based on a 1950 U.S. Department of Defense film called Duck and Cover, which taught school children what to do in case of a nuclear attack.

The Children’s City Project

Just think, you haven’t seen his masterwork yet. Yanobe was named the artist in residence for a six-month stay at the 21st Century Museum of Art in Kanazawa, near Tokyo. Here, Yanobe conceived the Children’s City Project, in which he built a “city” for children at the museum. He established a studio, equipped with welders and power tools, which he named the Children’s City Project Laboratory. Eventually up to 300 local citizens became involved and went to the museum to help with the work.

Yanobe and his volunteers built a Children’s City broadcasting company, complete with a TV tower and original programming. The project had its own City Hall and disco. The volunteers began competing to build their own pavilions for the project and finished 21, which completely encircled the museum from the exterior. They held exhibits in the museum showing the progress of the work on the pavilions. Some local people brought in a mini-railroad they had built themselves. This became the Children’s City Railroad, and tracks were laid around the museum. Nothing if not self-referential, Yanobe had a new railroad car built to be placed on the lead car of the train, and created a Torayan head that he placed on the front.

Torayan became the project’s symbolic character, and a Torayan Project within the Children’s City Project was created. Yanobe produced a cartoon feature starring Torayan for broadcast over the Children’s City television station. There were Torayan character goods, a theme song, a Torayan band, and Torabii stuffed toys. Eventually, Yanobe created a giant Torayan, called the G-TRY (shown here). The G-Try was a giant robot 7.5 meters tall that sang, danced, belched fire, and could follow orders, but only those issued by children. Yanobe called this the ultimate child’s dream. The voice recognition technology for the robot was developed by the Nagoya Institute of Technology, and Yanobe used his pre-school son’s voice as the recognition standard.

On the last day of the project, all 21 of the pavilions were returned to the lab. A projection screen was set up, where Yanobe and his volunteers watched the screening of a film with themselves as the performers, building the Children’s City over the previous six months.

Aichi Mammoth

Yanobe also has bit off more than even he can chew. The Chunichi Shimbun newspaper company asked him to create a special project for the 2005 Aichi Expo, so he conceived the Mammoth Robot of the 20th Century. The Aichi Expo exhibited a real mammoth excavated from the frozen tundra of Siberia, where it had been buried 10,000 years ago.

Yanobe came up with the idea of building a mammoth robot. It would be a four-legged beast that stood 20 meters high, weighed 20 tons, and walked by diesel power. After it was displayed, it was to be lifted by helicopter and flown over the city of Nagoya to be exhibited. The robot would then be returned to the ground, where it would walk to the port and board a ship that would transport it to Siberia. It was to be buried at the site where the real mammoth had been dug up, with instructions that it would be re-excavated in 10,000 years.

The project didn’t get off the ground because the sponsors didn’t have enough money set aside to pay for the project, and, as reported later, differed with Yanobe over what constituted art.

And of course Yanobe’s on YouTube with a video he created himself. It’s narrated in Japanese, but that doesn’t make any difference with this guy. He really likes industrial ruins. Don’t miss the second half, because it’s nothing like the first half.

Come to think of it, his work presents an interesting contrast with chindogu, though the scale is different. Some call Yanobe’s work art, but unlike pictures or sculptures, it is actually functional and can be used. (Why and by whom is a different question altogether.) In contrast, chindogu, as our previous report here notes, are tools with a purpose, but not meant to be used.

I’m not sure I want to reread this post. My mind might fall into an elevator shaft!

Matsuri da! (11) The rites of spring in Japan

WITH THE OFFICIAL ARRIVAL OF SPRING, if not spring weather, the focus of Japanese festivals turns from nearly naked men testing their endurance against the elements to events with warmer themes. One such festival was the Ondaue rice-planting festival in Aki-machi, Oita Prefecture on the 21st. Participants in this event mime the complete series of tasks required to plant a rice paddy. This includes sowing seeds, using an ox to plow the paddies, and having young boys play the role of saotome, or girls who sing as they plant rice. The indispensable element of all festivals is the enjoyment of the participants and viewers, so their performance is purposely comic.

The highlight for the onlookers came with the appearance of a papier-mâché black bull with two men inside. They pranced around wildly, neglecting their farm work while ignoring the farmer ordering them to plow.

The Ondaue Festival is an intangible culture property of the prefecture and has been performed for more than 180 years. It was formerly held on January 15, which was the old date for celebrating the start of the New Year, but lately it has been timed to coincide with the spring equinox.

Handa in Aichi Prefecture held their Otsukawa Festival on the 24th. Known locally as a harbinger of spring, the first part of the festival is performed for two days this month, and will continue on two more days each in April and May. The highlight is the shoving and tussling between groups of young men as they pull four floats weighing four tons apiece up a hill to the local shrine. The festival floats are the most elaborate of the 31 floats that have been used over the years in the city. Each float is pulled by a groups that number upwards of 100 men. They begin scuffling among themselves as they vie to take control of the floats’ steering mechanisms when they approach the foot of the hill.

They say that a young man’s fancy turns to love in the spring, but there are still some guys in Japan who’d rather dress up as a prancing bull or drag dead weight up a hill!