Yagicho Dashi – Kitsune Hayashi

Another of the many great dashi (mobile ritual stages) of the Hachioji Matsuri, the city festival earlier this month. Yagicho is a small area between Hachioji and Nishihachioji but their dashi had four different dancers at once during the peak hours of the festival. Two white foxes and two red foxes. Foxes hold a special place in Japanese mythology and religion and if you’ve followed this blog for a while you will have seen a lot of fox related posts!

Hachoji Matsuri Geisha Parade

There’s few things I enjoy more at the big city festival than seeing the geisha parades. I don’t know what kind of geisha the members of these parades are, but they look fantastic in their costumes, their make up and with their singing it becomes very effective. They carry red paper lanterns with their geisha names written on them. The lanterns are called chouchin (提灯). You don’t get to see these geisha parades very often, but some festivals have them. I saw these beauties at the Hachioji festival in western Tokyo.

Hachiouji Matsuri Kids and Traditions

Recently I have been thinking a lot about traditions and the role of culture in our societies. One of the main reasons I love Japan and the Japanese is the fact that they have kept their traditions alive, through technological advancements, industrialization, globalization and wars, the Japanese have retained the traditions and manners throughout the ages. Reading 1000 year old Japanese literature is in essence very similar to reading modern literature. The festivals, mannerism, music, masks and colors you see all over Japan almost daily has remained more or less unchanged for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. Japanese will happily wear clothes and costumes that would be considered very awkward in western countries, being dated and old fashioned. But in some way the Japanese have kept their culture alive and not locked up in elitist circles were many people feel they need a phd to understand or enjoy it. In Europe, and I guess in many other westernized countries as well, I always felt that people who were interested in culture and tradition were often looked down upon. People who tried to organize festivals and traditional events had to work terribly hard and overcome both disinterest and ridicule to achieve anything. In Europe, the only places you’ll see traditional clothes are open air museums and court ceremonies for example, with the possible exception of British courts.

In short, in most western countries it takes courage and an iron determination to maintain and keep traditions and local culture alive. Many people are afraid to associate with those proud of their heritage or culture for fear of being mistaken for nationalists. Now, nothing bores me more than outright nationalism or the other side of the same card, globalization. I just don’t want to hear about anyone promoting themselves by ridiculing others. At the same time the values and interests of people brainlessly rehashing the globalist mantra makes me sick to my stomach. It takes hundreds of years to create a living tradition, but it takes about five years after a “trade agreement” or the hijacking or traditions by nationalist sheep to kill it. It takes effort, pride and courage to believe in yourself, your community and your traditions, but it takes only one elitist comment, one bully or one snide newspaper comment to kill it all.

You see, the beauty of traditions is that we can only do it together. We can only do it locally. There’s nothing commercial about it. No businesses or local authority will benefit from the traditions of a local community. You can’t tax or market trust and neighborly love. You can’t package and sell respect for other countries. You will never win an election by praising your roots while praising the culture of other countries. What we as people have to understand, what we have to force ourselves to understand, deep below the layers of cultural crap fed to us by corporate media and lying politicians is that value doesn’t equal money, and that anything truly worthwhile can never be found in a shop or on TV or featured in a catalog. We have to un-brainwash ourselves by demanding the genuine and participating in our own lives. The ancients knew this, medieval peasants knew this. Nomads I have lived with in the few remaining genuine cultures on Earth know this. But us modern people have forgotten, with the exception of some local genuinely Temporary Autonomous Zones, as the ones I make a point of visiting as often as possible here in Japan, where people do things for themselves without involving authority or corporations.

It is time we reclaim our lives, our neighborhoods, our fields and streets and revive our culture and traditions with what we have lost and what we can resurrect. I sometimes see glimpses of this in the eyes of parents watching their kids perform, in the smiles of children dressing up and having fun together not because of any arbitrary division of people in classes, schools, districts and groups, but joined in the activity. You can’t tell the kids of the local electrician from the kids of the prime minister in these photos I took at the Hachioji festival. The tradition and the culture temporarily trumps money, globalization, nationalism and consumerism. This is humanity as it should be. Not what we are led to believe by our lying politicians, back stabbing merchants and manipulating media.