Immediately after returning from the Iya Valley, I had the opportunity to go to the Saijo Matsuri festival. Saijo is a town about 50 km southeast of Imabari, known for its shipyards and temples. This Matsuri, held in the middle of October for four days, is one of the bigger ones around; this year there were 82 floats… The floats themselves are large…and very heavy, supposedly they can weigh, literally, a ton! They’re made of wood, gilt, cloth and many layers of paint. For all I know they have lead weights in them.
They are carried by six to ten men and women, and often have little children perched up in them, ten or twelve feet off the ground. The parade to the riverbed, which is wide, graveled, and flat, comes after everyone’s been up for four days drinking and carrying these things around the city…it’s a bit wild. I did not see any matsuri fall, but one or two came within a foot or so.
There was a camera crew from NHK (Japanese Television) there videotaping, and the matsuri had to be carried over the step of the covered cable…a number of crews didn’t really see the step or were too tired
to lift the float over them, and stumbled…we, of course, were standing right there, until one almost fell on my manager Mayu and myself…it was quite exciting.
This is one of the festival marshals, in what I thought was a rather natty outfit...for some reason, for me it recalls the way performance artist and activist Joseph Bueys might dress up for something like this...
When the floats get to the river, six cross the bridge to the west side and line up there. The others line up in two ranks on the east side. They display to each other, the bearers pumping the floats up and down vigorously…parading them around and generally causing a scene.
Eventually, after an hour or two of this, a parade of priests, notable guests and attendants crosses the bridge and make an agreement with the breakaway matsuri, and everything begins to settle down.
Meanwhile the food stalls are doing a brisk business as evening falls. That's Mayu and Chihiro on the right, with some green tea Pocky, I think.
Lanterns on the matsuri are lit.
The darkness seems to calm everyone down a bit...after a while everyone goes home, the gods are put back to sleep in their shrines, and that’s that for this year.
