Daimyou Honenji at the Ikegami Oeshiki
At the annual oeshiki festival to honor the buddhist saint Nichiren at Tokyo’s Ikegami temple there’s teams joining from affiliated temples from all over Japan. One of the teams was this hardcore group from Kanagawa prefecture’s Daimyou Honenji who featured some excellent matai acrobatics! It’s amazing to see this guys and girls putting all their effort in showing off their skills and trying to outperform each other with these long poles of wood. Some twirl them around their bodies, almost laying flat on the ground, other do it behind their backs and one guy in this team even threw it in the air, having the strips reach the top of the arch and freeze for a split second while the pole itself stopped in mid air, all the while turning. Of course he caught it perfectly! To back these lay members of the temple up there are dozens of people joining in on drums, flutes and chanting, making for a very noisy festival. It is hard to believe they are celebrating the anniversary of their patron saint’s death!
It’s an odd dance they do, but you’ve captured the essence of it well I think.
Thanks Coal! (^-^)
Amazing to see! like coal said you really captured the essence…its great to see their faces as they dance! Great camera too.
Thank you for the kind comment Mahatttr!
Great shots of all the movements.
Thanks Amy! (^-^)
You captured some great atmosphere in these shots. I also like how you broke the number of images up with the groupings.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks! Someday I wish I could do proper video on the blog but the blurry shaky video I can take with my present camera is something no one wants to see…. (^-^;)
I’m very glad to see the same Oeshiki is still continuing in more or less the same style.
(But I never seen a female handler of Matoi)
I grown-up only miles away from Ikegami Honmon-ji Temple and it was my play ground.
As I left Japan ’74, last time to see Oeshiki was nearly 40 years ago, so that I’m very
grateful to see your photo blog here. —– in deed, the times has changed, still something hasn’t.
Thanks for your effort to show them.
Thank you for the kind comment! I imagine the female handlers are a new thing, these days there are kids doing smaller ones as well. It is one of my favorite festivals in Japan! (^-^)