Peace and Happy New Year.  RIP Johnny Carson.

The festival season in Japan lasts from early April to late March, so I was lucky to be in-country for two interesting and bizarre festivals, October’s Nada “Kenka” Matsuri (festival) nearby in Himeji, and January’s  Dosojin Festival up in Nagano Prefecture.  In the earlier of the two, large, color-coded teams from surrounding neighborhoods carry two types of large, ornately-decorated shrines (called mikoshi) throughout the streets and squares of the city, chanting, singing and imbibing much sake.  The first type of shrine is much more beautiful, layered in gold leaf and intricate carvings, costing in the neighborhood of $300,000 each and carrying within it four costumed, drumming priests.  For the hordes of loincloth-clad men hoisting these several-ton bad boys, you’d think that these people would be the proverbial monks-that-broke-the-camel’s-back, but they actually provide the rhythm for the festivities, unfaltering in its execution through even the rowdiest bounces, drops, turns and slams that make up the carrying process.  The teams take turns parading around and encircling each other, eventually creating a line of three or more mikoshi to which the crowd (in the 10,000s) cheers obligingly.  The idea is to present a symbolic spirit of kenka, or fighting competition to the gods.  The symbolic part ends right there, however, as the second type of mikoshi, a cheaper and less ornate variety, minus three of the four drummers, takes the stage.  In this section, the shrines are actually smashed together by the teams in a royal-rumble style, last-shrine-standing-wins competition.  Amazing?  Yes.  Dangerous?  Definitely.  Meaningful?  Whatever.  Apparently it’s not unheard of for there to be severe injuries and even deaths, and while I was not in the immediate thick of the action, I saw at least one participant taken out in a stretcher.  Ouch.

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