Golden Week has come and gone, with the finality of the festivities emphasized by a night and day of rain. Now that our headaches are gone, cobwebs cleared, and pants dry, I present you with some text and photos in a loose report of varying style.
A brief summary of Hamamatsu Matsuri
Golden Week is celebrated throughout Japan… it is a week containing 3 or 4 national holidays so pretty much no one works (except for those unfortunate enough to be employed at a convenience store*) and everyone parties. Hamamatsu is overwhelmingly known for its kite festival, in which each neighborhood in the city builds huge bamboo and rice paper kites, takes them to the Nakatajima dunes, and for three days wage war in the sky.
The Hamamatsu Matsuri (festival) lasts for three days, though legend has it it used to last for five according to a businessman kzi was talking to. It seems five days of kite fights and float hauling was too much for everyone (I was exhausted after marginally participating in three). The festival rests on and encourages community involvement; the kites, floats, and bands are made by and comprised of individuals from each neighborhood. Neighborhoods vary in size, with Owari-cho (our neighborhood) encompassing eight blocks and the larger neighborhoods like Kamoe-N encompassing at least twenty. During the day, the kites engage in battle and in the evenings neighborhoods parade floats around the town and the bands gallivant about playing trumpets, waving lanterns, shouting “yoisho!” incessantly and drinking lots of sake and beer.
Photos and Words
We went to see the kite battles on the third day of matsuri. We took a ten minute walk behind the tree line on our way to the field. Already kites were falling from the sky tangling themselves in the treel ine to our left and the power lines to our right. The field, which is very much a battlefield, is surrounded by a buffer of trees littered with resting crew members from representing neighborhoods - troops resting up for their rotation on the field. The battlefield itself is amazing and cannot accurately be summed up with words or pictures… the activity is incessant, the drums and trumpets resonate with battle cries, and the kites which float with such Zen in the sky one moment, engage in tangled battle the next.
We spent the day on the field, cheering for Owari-cho and eating various sundries from the food stands that border the area. On our way back we swung by the beach, which was a disappointing arrangement of trash and more trash.
Day two of the matsuri was our big night out in which we scored invitations to one of the neighborhood parties. Due to my curmudgeon nature I missed the big show, but kzi came back for me so I didn’t miss out on everything. The party we were at was hosted by a man who owns a large construction company but also dabbles in music on the side. Free booze and insanity all around… in Japan people get as drunk as anything and behave ridiculously, but the next day all is forgivin, a policy I highly recommend for everyone engaging in massive liquor consumption in a brief period of time.
On our way to another neighborhood party kzi paused to take a picture of me by some pink flowers. While I was posing, a family walked behind kzi and started waving peace/victory signs (a popular hand phrase in Japan it seems), so I mimicked and the next thing we knew they were lending us their happis and having us pose for photographs with their two young daughters. Happis are worn by each neighborhood, coats of sorts that have the neighborhood symbol on the back and a key element to anyone participating in the matsuri.
That’s kzi and I in our briefly loaned happis.
Besides the drinking and gallivanting at night, each neighborhood parades about their very intricate and beautiful floats, in which women and girls ride and play instruments. I don’t know what the origins of the floats are, or much about them, but they are very amazing and very expensive.
Like the kite battlefield, the floats and neighborhood bands are hard to describe… the event reminds me of Mardi Gras, the real version and not the frat boy version, in terms of the level of celebration and the Dionysian feeling that accompanies it. Celebration and camaraderie inebriates the air and everyone is festive and inviting whether you speak the language or not.
And that concludes my brief and poor attempt at portraying Golden Week/Hamamatsu Matsuri.
* Convenience stores are the tried and true of businesses in Japan. They are open 24/7 no matter what, and in the event of an earthquake/tsunami, even when the hospitals close, they will be open happily serving you beer, karage, and kimchi.