Japanese festivals (0)

Japanese festivals
Japanese festivals are traditional festive occasions. Some festivals have their roots in Chinese festivals but have undergone dramatic changes as they mixed with local customs.
Some are so different that they do not even remotely resemble the original festival despite sharing the same name and date . There are also various local festivals (e.g. Tobata Gion ) that are mostly unknown outside a given prefecture. It is commonly said that you will always find a festival somewhere in Japan .
Matsuri is the Japanese word for a festival or holiday. In Japan, festivals are usually sponsored by a local shrine or temple , though they can be secular.
There is no specific matsuri days for all of Japan; dates vary from area to area, and even within a specific area, but festival days do tend to cluster around traditional holidays such as Setsubun or Obon. Almost every locale has at least one matsuri in late summer / early autumn , usually related to the rice harvest.
Notable matsuri often feature processions which may include elaborate floats. Preparation for these processions is usually organized at the level of neighborhoods, or machi. Prior to these, the local kami may be ritually installed in mikoshi and paraded through the streets.
One can always find in the vicinity of a matsuri booths selling souvenirs and food such as takoyaki, and games , such as Goldfish scooping. Karaoke contests, sumo matches, and other forms of entertainment are often organized in conjunction with matsuri. If the festival is next to a lake, renting a boat is also an attraction.
Favorite elements of the most popular matsuri, such as the Nada Kenka Matsuri of Himeji or the Neputa Matsuri of Hirosaki, are often broadcast on television for the entire nation to enjoy.
Some examples of famous matsuri are the Jidai , Hadaka Matsuri, Aoi and Gion Matsuri held in Kyoto; Tenjin Matsuri in Osaka ; and the Kanda Matsuri, Sannō and Sanja Matsuri of Tokyo . Especially, Gion Matsuri, Tenjin Matsuri, and Kanda Matsuri are the three most famous matsuri in Japan.
Sapporo Snow Festival ( Hokkaido )
Sapporo Yuki Matsuri, this is one of the largest festivals of the year for the city of Sapporo. This festival is held in February for one week. This festival began in 1950 when high school students built snow statues in Odori Park, central Sapporo. This event is now very large and commercialized. This event attracts over two million people from around the world every year. About a dozen large sculptures are built for the festival along with around 100 smaller snow and ice sculptures. Several concerts and other events are held at this festival. At the Sapporo TV tower one can use their observation deck to view the beautiful sculptures at Odori Park for ¥700 from 09:00-22:30 (starting at 08:00 on the weekend ) (Japan- Guide .com).
Lake Shikotsu Ice Festival
Lake Shikotsu is the northernmost ice-free lake which is 363 meters deep . This festival features a moss-covered cave, which has evergreen draped on the inside and is covered in ice (Gianola, 2008). This festival is held from late January to mid February. This festival features ice sculptures, small and large. At night the sculptures are illuminated by different colored lights. There is a fireworks show during the festival as well. Admission is free. Amasake (hot sake) is available for purchase to enjoy (2008 Ministry of Land ).
Lake Towada Snow Festival
This lake festival is held in the beginning of February. Held in the town of Yasumiya, this festival is on the south side of lake Towada ( near the wooden statues). This festival is open all day, but at 5pm one can enjoy activities such as going through a snow maze , exploring a Japanese igloo, and eat foods from Aomori and Akita prefectures. There is a fireworks show and events held on an ice stage.
Aomori Nebuta Festival
This festival is held annually and features colorful lantern floats called nebuta which are pulled through the streets of Central Aomori. This festival is held from about August 2-7 every year. This event attracts millions of visitors. During this festival, 20 large nebuta floats are paraded through the streets near Aormori JR rail station . These floats are constructed of wooden bases and metal frames . Japanese papers; washi, are painted onto the frames. These amazing floats are finished off with the historical figures or kabuki being painted on the paper . These floats can take up to a year to complete . There is a dance portion of this festival. There are haneto dancers and they wear special costumes for this dance. Everyone is welcome to purchase their own haneto costume that they may too join in on the fun (Mishima, Aomori Nebuta Festival).
Nango Summer Jazz Festival
This event is held every year. Thousands of artists from all over Tohoku and even further regions come to Nango to perform. This is the largest open-air jazz concert held in Tohoku region . This festival began in 1989, in a small venue indoors. There was such a large response from the fans that is was expanded into a large annual festival. One must purchase tickets for this event (Bernard, 2007).
Cherry blossom festivals
Japan celebrates the entire season of the cherry blossoms.
All over Japan festivals are held and include food and at night beautiful lanterns. An interesting fact concerning cherry blossoms:
According to a study , plants in urban areas have plants that bloom are blooming faster. From evidence at a cherry arboretum at Mt. Takao, early flowering of the cherry blossoms is happening due to the larger response to temperature variation (Primack, Higuchi, & Miller -Rushing, 2009).
Some locations of cherry blossom festivals include:
Yaedake Cherry Blossom Festival in Okinawa. This festival takes place from late January – mid February
Matsuyama Shiroyama Koen Cherry Blossom Festival in Matsuyama-city, Ehime. This festival takes place early April.
Matsue Jozan Koen Festival in Matsue-city, Shimane. This festival has a feature of illuminating the cherry blossom trees at night. This festival takes place late March -early April.
Tsuyama Kakuzan Koen Cherry Blossom Festival in Tsuyama-city, Okayama. Japanese tea ceremonies and music performers are held at these festivals. This festival is held early-mid April.
Takato Joshi Koen Cherry Blossom Festival in Takato-machi Ina-city, Nagano prefecture. The trees in this region have pink blossoms. This festival is held early April.
Takada Koen Cherry Blossom Festival in Joetsu-city, Niigata prefecture. This festival is held early-mid April.
Kitakami Tenshochi Cherry Blossom Festival in Kitakami-city, Iwate. This festival is held mid April-early May.
Hirosaki Cherry Blossom Festival held in Hirosaki Koen Hirosaki-city, Aomori prefecture. This festival is held late April-early May (Mishima, Cherry Blossom Festivals 2010).
Date: 1–3 of January (related celebrations take place throughout January)
NEW YEAR
The Japanese celebrate New Year's Day on January 1 each year on the Gregorian Calendar . Before 1873, the date of the Japanese New Year (正月, shōgatsu?) was based on the Chinese lunar calendar, just as the contemporary Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese New Years are celebrated to this day. However , in 1873, five years after the Meiji Restoration, Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar, so the first day of January is the official New Year's Day in modern Japan. It is considered by most Japanese to be one of the most important annual festivals and has been celebrated for centuries with its own unique customs.
Traditional food
Japanese people eat a special selection of dishes during the New Year celebration called osechi-ryōri (御節料理 or お節料理?), typically shortened to osechi. This consists of boiled seaweed (昆布, kombu?), fish cakes (蒲鉾, kamaboko?), mashed sweet potato with chestnut (栗きんとん, kurikinton?), simmered burdock root (金平牛蒡, kinpira gobo?), and sweetened black soybeans (黒豆, kuromame?). Many of these dishes are sweet, sour, or dried, so they can keep without refrigeration—the culinary traditions date to a time before households had refrigerators, when most stores closed for the holidays. There are many variations of osechi, and some foods eaten in one region are not eaten in other places (or are even banned) on New Year's Day. Another popular dish is ozōni (お雑煮?), a soup with omochi (お餅?) and other ingredients that differ based on various regions of Japan. Today , sashimi and sushi are often eaten, as well as non-Japanese foods. To let the overworked stomach rest , seven- herb rice soup (七草粥, nanakusa-gayu?) is prepared on the seventh day of January, a day known as jinjitsu (人日?).
Bell ringing
At midnight on December 31, Buddhist temples all over Japan ring their bells a 108 times to symbolize the 108 human sins in Buddhist belief, and to get rid of the 108 worldly desires regarding sense and feeling in every Japanese citizen. A major attraction is The Watched Night bell, in Tokyo. Japanese believe that the ringing of bells can rid off their sins during the previous year.
Postcards
The end of December and the beginning of January are the busiest times for the Japanese post offices. The Japanese have a custom of sending New Year's Day postcards (年賀状, nengajō?) to their friends and relatives, similar to the Western custom of sending Christmas cards. Their original purpose was to give your faraway friends and relatives tidings of yourself and your immediate family. In other words , this custom existed for people to tell others whom they did not often meet that they were alive and well.
Japanese people send these postcards so that they arrive on the 1st of January. The post office guarantees to deliver the greeting postcards by the first of January if they are posted within a time limit , from mid-December to near the end of the month and are marked with the word nengajo. To deliver these cards on time, the post office usually hires students part -time to help deliver the letters .
It is customary not to send these postcards when one has had a death in the family during the year. In this case , a family member sends a simple postcard to inform friends and relatives they should not send New Year's cards, out of respect for the deceased.
People get their nengajō from many sources . Stationers sell preprinted cards. Most of these have the Chinese zodiac sign of the New Year as their design, or conventional greetings, or both . The Chinese zodiac has a cycle of 12 years. Each year is represented by an animal . The animals are, in order : rat, ox, tiger , rabbit, dragon , snake, horse , sheep, monkey , rooster, dog, and boar. 2006 was the year of the dog, 2007 was the year of the boar, 2008 was the year of the rat, 2009 was the year of the ox, and 2010 is the year of the tiger. For 2006, famous dogs like Snoopy and other cartoon characters were especially popular. For 2008, Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse were popular.
The postcards may have spaces for the sender to write a personal message. Blank cards are available, so people can hand -write or draw their own. Rubber stamps with conventional messages and with the annual animal are on sale at department stores and other outlets, and many people buy ink brushes for personal greetings. Special printing devices are popular, especially among people who practice crafts. Software also lets artists create their own designs and output them using their computer's color printer . Because a gregarious individual might have hundreds to write, print shops offer a wide variety of sample postcards with short messages so that the sender has only to write addresses. Even with the rise in popularity of email , the nengajō remains very popular in Japan.
Conventional nengajō greetings include:
kotoshi mo yoroshiku o-negai-shimasu (今年もよろしくお願いします?) (I hope for your favour again in the coming year)
(shinnen) akemashite o-medetō-gozaimasu ((新年)あけましておめでとうございます?) ( Happiness to you on the dawn [of a New Year])
kinga shinnen (謹賀新年?) ( Happy New Year)
shoshun (初春?) ( literally "early spring ")
On New Year's Day, Japanese people have a custom of giving money to children . This is known as otoshidama (お年玉, otoshidama?). It is handed out in small decorated envelopes called 'pochibukuro,' similar to Goshugi bukuro or Chinese red envelopes and to the Scottish handsel. In the Edo period large stores and wealthy families gave out a small bag of mochi and a Mandarin orange to spread happiness all around. The amount of money given depends on the age of the child but is usually the same if there is more than one child so that no one feels slighted.
Mochi
Another custom is creating rice cakes (餅, mochi?). Boiled sticky rice (餅米, mochigome?) is put into a wooden shallow bucket-like container and patted with water by one person while another person hits it with a large wooden mallet . Mashing the rice, it forms a sticky white dumpling. This is made before New Year's Day and eaten during the beginning of January.
Mochi is made into a New Year's decoration called kagami mochi (鏡餅?), formed from two round cakes of mochi with a bitter orange (橙, daidai?) placed on top. The name daidai is supposed to be auspicious since it means "several generations."
Because of mochi's extremely sticky texture, there is usually a small number of choking deaths around New Year in Japan, particularly amongst the elderly. The death toll is reported in newspapers in the days after New Year
Poetry
The New Year traditions are also a part of Japanese poetry, including haiku and renga . All of the traditions above would be appropriate to include in haiku as kigo (season words). There are also haiku that celebrate many of the "first" of the New Year, such as the "first sun" (hatsuhi) or "first sunrise ", "first laughter" (waraizome—starting the New Year with a smile is considered a good sign), and first dream (hatsuyume). Since the traditional New Year was later in the year than the current date, many of these mention the beginning of spring.
Along with the New Year's Day postcard, haiku might mention "first letter" (hatsudayori— meaning the first exchange of letters), "first calligraphy" (kakizome), and "first brush" (fude hajime).
Games
It was also customary to play many New Year's games. These include hanetsuki, takoage (kite flying ), koma (top), sugoroku, fukuwarai (whereby a blindfolded person places paper parts of a face , such as eyes , eyebrows, a nose and a mouth, on a paper face), and karuta.
Entertainment
There are many shows created as the end-of-year, and beginning-of-year entertainment, and some being a special edition of the regular shows. For many decades, it has been customary to watch the TV show Kōhaku Uta Gassen aired on NHK on New Year's Eve. The show features two teams , red and white, of popular music artists competing against each other.
Hatsumōde, hatsuhinode, the "firsts" of the year
Celebrating the new year in Japan also means paying special attention to the first time something is done in the new year.
Hatsuhinode (初日の出) is the first sunrise of the year. Before sunrise on January 1, people often drive to the coast or climb a mountain so that they can see the first sunrise of the new year. Hatsumōde is the first trip to a shrine or temple. Many people visit a shrine after midnight on December 31 or sometime during the day on January 1. If the weather is good, people often dress up or wear kimono . Other "firsts" that are marked as special events include shigoto-hajime (仕事始め, the first work of the new year), keiko-hajime (稽古始め, the first practice of the new year), hatsugama (the first tea ceremony of the new year), and the hatsu-uri (the first shopping sale of the new year).
DOLL FESTIVAL
Date: March 3
The Japanese Doll Festival or Girls ' Day, is held on March 3.[1] Platforms covered with a red carpet are used to display a set of ornamental dolls representing the Emperor , Empress, attendants, and musicians in traditional court dress of the Heian period.
Origin and customs
The custom of displaying dolls began during the Heian period. Formerly, people believed the dolls possessed the power to contain bad spirits. Hinamatsuri traces its origins to an ancient Japanese custom called hina -nagashi (雛流し?, lit. "doll floating"), in which straw hina dolls are set afloat on a boat and sent down a river to the sea, supposedly taking troubles or bad spirits with them. The Shimogamo Shrine (part of the Kamo Shrine complex in Kyoto) celebrates the Nagashibina by floating these dolls between the Takano and Kamo Rivers to pray for the safety of children. People have stopped doing this now because of fishermen catching the dolls in their nets . They now send them out to sea, and when the spectators are gone they take the boats out of the water and bring them back to the temple and burn them.
The customary drink for the festival is shirozake, a sake made from fermented rice. A colored hina-arare, bite -sized crackers flavored with sugar or soy sauce depending on the region, and hishimochi, a diamond-shaped colored rice cake, are served.[3] Chirashizushi (sushi rice flavored with sugar, vinegar, topped with raw fish and a variety of ingredients) is often eaten. A salt -based soup called ushiojiru containing clams still in the shell is also served. Clam shells in food are deemed the symbol of a united and peaceful couple, because a pair of clam shells fits perfectly, and no pair but the original pair can do so.
Families generally start to display the dolls around mid-February and take down the platforms immediately after the festival. Superstition says that leaving the dolls out past March 4 will result in a late marriage for the daughter .
Placement
The Kantō region and Kansai region have different placement orders of the dolls from left to right, but the order of dolls per level are the same.
The term for the platform in Japanese is hina dan. The layer of covering is called dankake or simply hi-mōsen a red carpet with rainbow -striped at the bottom .
First platform
The top tier holds two dolls, known as imperial dolls. These are the Emperor holding a ritual baton and Empress holding a fan. The words dairi means "imperial palace ", and hina means "girl" or "princess".
The dolls are usually placed in front of a gold folding screen byōbu.
Optional are the two lampstands, called bonbori, and the paper or silk lanterns that are known as hibukuro, which are usually decorated with cherry or ume blossom patterns.
Complete sets would include accessories placed between the two figures, known as sanbō kazari, composing of two vases of artificial peach branch kuchibana.
The traditional arrangement had the male on the right, while modern arrangements had him on the left (from the viewer's perspective).
Second platform
The second tier holds three court ladies san-nin kanjo. Each holds sake equipment . From the viewer's perspective, the standing lady on the right is the long-handled sake-bearer Nagae no chōshi, the standing lady on the left is the backup sake-bearer Kuwae no chōshi, and the only lady in the middle is the seated sake bearer Sanpō.
Accessories placed between the ladies are takatsuki, stands with round table-tops for seasonal sweets, excluding hishimochi.
Third platform
The third tier holds five male musicians gonin bayashi (五人囃子?). Each holds a musical instrument except the singer , who holds a fan.
Left to right, from viewer's perspective, they are the:
1.Small drum Taiko , seated,
2.Large drum Ōtsuzumi, standing,
3.Hand drum Kotsuzumi, standing,
4.Flute Fue or Yokobue seated,
5.Singer Utaikata, holding a folding fan sensu , seated.
Fourth platform
Two ministers (daijin) may be displayed on the fourth tier: the Minister of the Right and the Minister of the Left . The Minister of the Right is depicted as a young person, while the Minister of the Left is much older. Also, because the dolls are placed in positions relative to each other, the Minister of the Right will be on the viewer's left and the Minister of the Left will be on the viewer's right. Both are sometimes equipped with bows and arrows.
Between the two figures are covered bowl tables kakebanzen, also referred to as o-zen, as well as diamond-shaped stands hishidai bearing diamond-shaped ricecakes hishimochi. Hishidai with feline-shaped legs are known as nekoashigata hishidai.
Just below the ministers: on the rightmost, a mandarin orange tree Ukon no tachibana, and on the leftmost, a cherry tree Sakon no sakura .
Fifth platform
The fifth tier, between the plants, holds three helpers or samurai as the protectors of the Emperor and Empress. From left to right (viewer's perspective):
1.Maudlin drinker nakijōgo,
2.Cantankerous drinker okorijōgo, and
3.Merry drinker waraijōgo
Other platforms
On the sixth and seventh tiers, a variety of miniature furniture, tools, carriages, etc., are displayed.
Sixth platform
These are items used within the palatial residence .
tansu: chest of (usually five) drawers, sometimes with swinging outer covering doors .
nagamochi: long chest for kimono storage.
hasamibako: smaller clothing storage box, placed on top of nagamochi.
kyōdai: literally mirror stand , a smaller chest of drawer with a mirror on top.
haribako: sewing kit box.
two hibachi: braziers.
daisu: a set of ocha dōgu or cha no yu dōgu, utensils for the tea ceremony.
Seventh platform
These are items used when away from the palatial residence.
jubako, a set of nested lacquered food boxes with either a cord tied vertically around the boxes or a stiff handle that locks them together.
gokago, a palanquin.
goshoguruma, an ox-drawn carriage favored by Heian nobility. This last is sometimes known as gisha or gyuusha.
Less common, hanaguruma, an ox drawing a cart of flowers.
Elsewhere
The Hinamatsuri is also celebrated in Florence ( Italy ), with the patronage of the Embassy of Japan, the Japanese Institute and the historical Gabinetto Vieusseux.