Sanja Matsuri and Hanami – Tokyo, Japan
Posted by Jackie Hewett on Wed 2nd May 2007 at 02:26 AM, Filed in Far East, May
To westerners Japanese culture can seem quite alien and incomprehensible, possibly never more so than when they embark, as they frequently do, on a festival. This nation of usually conformist, and by UK standards shy, people seem to need the slimmest pretext to get their kit off and run around half naked beating drums.
If you are interested in visiting Japan there are some good reasons to time your visit for April / May.
One being Sanja Maturi in May, which is the one of the largest Matsuri parades in Japan. During a Matsuri, Shinto followers bear shrines, called mikoshi, on their shoulders using two poles. Frequently the mikoshi look like lavishly decorated miniature buildings, sometimes complete with verandas, pillars and railings. They can require dozens of people to carry each one. The mikoshi are taken from a permanent shrine and carried on a ‘tour’ around the neighbourhood, sometimes via a dip in a pool, lake or river, before being returned to the originating shrine. The mikoshi contain kami (or deities) and the procession is meant to bring luck and good fortune. It is believed that the rougher the journey the kami experiences the better the fortune is bestowed, so bearers often sway the heavy mikoshi precariously from side to side which can be a dangerous occupation for bearer and spectator.
There are many Matsuri parades throught Japan, but Sanja Maturi is a three day affair that attracts some 2 million spectators each year so see the 100 or so mikoshi. On the first day the parade consists of a purification ritual and a parade of several hundred people. On the second day the mikoshi processions start, but it is on the third day that the Asakusa shrine’s three huge mikoshi (weighing over a ton each) are paraded. There’s plenty of drinking, dancing and music and it’s a great opportunity to see
geisha without having to go to an expensive tea house or heavily tattooed yakuza (Japanese gangsters) who cannot normally show off their body art as it’s ordinarily against the law.
Slightly earlier in the year, although impossible to accurately predict, is hanami, or cherry blossom viewing that overtakes the entire country. As Japan’s national flower the sakura (cherry blossom) adorns clothing (especially kimono), stationary and table ware. There are 300 plus varieties of sakura with the most popular having nearly pure white flowers with a smattering of palest pink near the stem.
Sakura blossoming is taken very seriously and tracked by the Japanese Meteorological Agency with nightly media reporting. The flowers start to appear in Okinawak as early as January, but typically bloom around end of March early April in Kyotot and Tokyo. The flowers usually drop within a week of flowering, before the leaves come out. Therefore, the trees look nearly white from top to bottom.
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