O-mikoshi

Last weekend Pete and I participated in a neighbourhood festival. Our co-worker Aya invited us. It's the neighbourhood she has lived in all her life, so she knows a lot of people there. It was nice feeling a real community feeling, with lots of neighbours greeting each other.

So we congregated at the neighbourhood shrine just after 9:30am, for the start of a long day! We met some of Aya's neighbours, who were understandably a little surprised to see two foreigners rock up at their local neighbourhood festival. Everyone was very friendly and greeted us kindly.

The focal point of a lot of festivals in Japan is carrying a 'mikoshi'. This is a team effort. A mikoshi is a portable shrine. It is quite large and apparently very, very heavy. The shrine is attached to several long beams of timber. Men (and sometimes women) carry the mikoshi all around the neighbourhood while chanting the rallying cry of 'wasshoi wasshoi' or 'seiya seiya'.

We all donned happi coats, and many people also wore hachimaki*, which are special headbands, tied to indicate seriousness of purpose. Like, 'yoooosh, we're gonna DO THIS THING!' The MC of the day gave an introductory speech, and we did this kind of clapping routine together, and everyone drank a small bowl of sake. Many of the women, including me, had bells tied around our ankles, to enhance the noise we made.

*(I had to look up that word and correct it. First, I wrote, 'many people also wore harumaki', which means 'many people also wore spring rolls', hahaha...)

If you look at Google images you can see some examples of mikoshi, and happi coats, hachimaki, etc.

Then, we all did a dance to start the festival. Many of the women had fans, and we did a kind of dance using the fans. I say 'we' did a dance but of course I am hopeless at dancing of all kinds and I privately resolved not to participate in (and thus ruin) the subsequent ones, hahaha...

Then, around 10:10, the mikoshi procession began. The idea was to carry the mikoshi all around the neighbourhood. The mikoshi is traditionally carried by men only, but these days women often take a turn. However, mostly, the women just took short turns, and the men bore the brunt of it. Pete was put at the back with the other taller guys. Apparently, carrying a mikoshi is rough on tall guys (as you can imagine, if several guys of different height are carrying something together, the taller guys have to stoop a bit, or bend their knees more).

Most of the women had a go at carrying it but I opted not to. This was not for lack of opportunities, at least a dozen different people invited me to take a turn, eager that I shouldn't miss out. But I'd decided ahead of time that I wouldn't carry it, since it is essentially a religious activity (although most Japanese people don't consider themselves religious; this is also a cultural activity), transporting the local god around the neighbourhood.

So instead of carrying the mikoshi I worked on cheering on those carrying it. And this also takes a lot of energy!

So, when people carry a mikoshi, they don't just simply carry it. They carry with a lot of energy and spirit. The carriers chant different things according to neighbourhood (our group went for 'seiya seiya'. It doesn't really have any meaning, it's just something people chant, for energy. You could imagine it means something like 'heave ho, heave ho'.) Also, they kind of walk with a dancing gait, bouncing the mikoshi up and down. This puts a lot of pressure on knees and shoulders.

The people walking with the mikoshi procession cheer on the people carrying it. So if you are cheering, you have to be LOUD, a lot louder than those carrying. We walked in front, behind, or alongside the mikoshi, waving fans, and occasionally taking turns with the BIG fan which could take a person out if you weren't careful with your aim! We could also go and fan the people's faces, since the sun was warm and they were sweating a LOT.

The processsion lasted perhaps an hour before we had a lunch break. We did have a 'made it down the first street' break where people drank alcohol (I've never drunk my second serve of alcohol at 10:30 am before...). Then a bit later, we met at a busy intersection in the neighbourhood, where three mikoshi converged and had a kind of 'mikoshi competition'. Here, we ate onigiri, met some of Aya's nice neighbours, and drank more alcohol (but small amounts of low strength, nobody was getting drunk). Pete and I got a chance to beat on this giant taiko drum in accordance with some guy's instructions ('okay, left! left again! now, left-right-left-right!).

After the lunch break, though, the procession resumed with a vengeance! We had quite a long route, with a lot of neighbourhood people turning out to watch as we went down the street, and passing lots of stores, a school, an old folk's home, etc. I think we went for over 90 minutes without a break. All the time, we had to maintain the same energy levels, and screamed and exhorted and fanned and gestured, while walking backwards in a kind of energetic way, the whole time.

However, our efforts were nothing compared to the guys carrying a hugely heavy mikoshi! Guys would switch out for short periods when the strain got too much, but most of them quickly returned to continue. Your performance and stoicism on the mikoshi is a sign of manly strength and vigour. At the end I saw some guys had blood on their shoulders. I later learned that many of these guys had done another mikoshi procession on the previous day!

Anyway eventually we reached our destination, and the mikoshi was loaded onto a truck to be driven back to the original shrine! Any time we stopped or started for a significant period of time, there'd be this routine of clapping, dancing, and drinking sake.

At the destination point there was the usual festival set-up, with lots of stalls selling various food. We had some. ^_^ At this spot was a women's mikoshi and a children's mikoshi. The guys had done well, and I learned the Japanese word 'kata' (shoulder), since at least ten different guys asked Pete if his shoulder hurt. There was a real sense of cameraderie after completing the physically demanding challenge together, especially among the guys.