Festivals and social movements— urban matsuri literature

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As with most ethnographies that track a community throughout the year, recent ethnographies in urban Japanese locales make note of the festival occasion (which is, after all, difficult to avoid), but are elsewhere occupied, and generally fail to explore the festival’s performative openings. An exception to this is Bestor’s work in a shitamachi (downtown) Tokyo neighborhood. Bestor notes the careful organization and the details in planning and execution of the festival. He remarks on how the event is at the same time a reflection of hierarchical social organization and egalitarian cooperation.

“The matsuri and the month or so of preparations leading up to it express several important, though sometimes seemingly antithetical, social themes. Social stratification and ranking in Miyamoto-choo are expressed and enforced through the assignment of positions on the festival committee and through public postings of residents’ contributions. Strong distinctions are underscored between newcomers and longer-term residents in the selection and duties of committee members. Stratified authority governs decision-making for the festival. Tasks in managing and running the festival, and even the spatial and temporal distribution of activities during it, reflect rigid divisions of labor by age and gender. Yet despite the social differentiation that plays so visible a role, sentiments of solidarity and egalitarianism prevail, and when residents talk of the festival’s meaning, they speak of this spirit of communal unity as the matsuri’s dominant motif.”
(Bestor 1989, 235)

Bestor provides in his discussion of the festival enough materials to suggest the social dynamics of the event (although he was basically unconcerned over matters of cultural expression, aesthetics and other, performative critiques). But even his description, as the above illustrates, deserves to be explored in much greater detail, as it elides the various problems it introduces by allowing for a gloss of the festival under the rubric of communal solidarity.

“When residents talk,” suggests that there is an unquestionable unanimity¹ of opinion, and that this would not reveal underlying disagreements if the ethnographer were more direct in pursuing this topic among various members of the neighborhood. Of all the events that a neighborhood might perform, it is the festival that should open up to multiple readings and voices because of the decontrol of emotions it fosters.

His description of the participation allows us to see that most of the egalitarian cooperation comes in the form of the widespread solicitation of donations to the shrine, although these are also limited by an appropriateness that is guided by residential status (to give too much would be presumptuous, and to give too little would lead to a general disapproval). His description of the event, however, shows that it retains its performative energy, the combination of muscle and crowd and alcohol that makes it dangerous.

“STACCATO WHISTLES, hoarse shouts of “Washoi! Washoi!, and the rhythmic counterpoint of wooden clappers shatter the late summer afternoon as a seething mass of sweaty men lurches down the shopping street under a float the size and weight of a small automobile. Brass ornaments glitter and tinkle in the frenzy. The tassels of the float’s purple lashings spin wildly above the men’s shoulders. Bystanders rush to remove bicycles and other obstructions from the mob’s path. Tiny children peer out from behind their mothers’ aprons, enchantment and fear in turn playing across their faces. Strong men push float and mob back, steering them away from a plate-glass window. Chortling grandmothers gleefully toss buckets of water from second-floor windows onto the steaming backs of the churning mass of men below. Bus and taxi drivers watch—some with amusement, others with impatience—as they sit stranded in the midst of the thronging celebrants who clog the streets and stop the flow of traffic for a few minutes. The mob of men— some clad like old-fashioned craftsmen in matching blue and brown hanten (workmen’s jackets), hachimaki (headbands), and haragake (tight-fitting black vests and leggings), others stripped to the waist—spin and whirl their way through all corners of the neighborhood during two or more hours of ecstatic exhaustion, almost hypnotized by the incessant, deafening, pounding rhythms of the cadence, of the clappers, of the whistles.

Miyamoto-cho’s festival is under way, and the O-mikoshi—the palanquin of the tutelary deity of the local Shinto shrine, the Kami-sama of Tenso Jinja—has taken over the neighborhood’s streets during the deity’s annual round of inspection.” (Bestor 224-225).

The sweaty men on the street here, we can only assume (as this is not given in the text) are all residents of the neighborhood. But how are they chosen? It would be interesting to return in 1997, to see if there are still enough men to carry the omikoshi, and if newcomers have greater access to positions of visible authority in the event.

Bestor’s ethnography of a Tokyo neighborhood with as long-time history of festival production is well complemented by Jennifer Robertson’s description of festivity in an emerging suburban Tokyo city. But Robertson also connects the organization of the new civic (shimin) festival in this city to national government programs aimed at re-traditionalizing Japanese towns.

“One can go so far as to assert that Japan’s current development itself has been brought about as a result of this kind of close linking [through festival practices] between the Japanese people and their deities. In short, one can truly say that Japan is a ‘land of festivals.’”
Nihon wa Matsuri no Kuni
Japan, Land of Festivals
Tokyo, Jinjahoncho n.d

Festivals in various locales in Japan have been promoted by local and national governments as the quintessentially traditional (dentouteki) Japanese practice; a practice that brings with it the capacity to anchor its communities into a traditional mode of living. But what this national program failed to realize was the active residuum of “native” status in locales. Although the festivals were new, they were couched in traditional² Shinto forms, attached to long-existent local political and social/religious organizations, and so organized by existing hierarchically determined social groups based on residential tenure.

These new/old festivals failed to create a sense of belonging for newcomers to neighborhoods, who were mostly excluded (except for demands for contributions), and disaffected by these events. Even the “native” residents were more indifferent to these new festivals, preferring the ones they had long supported. Their contributions to new events exhibited the unscripted emotional release that was central to the older neighborhood events, only now it was all a part of the plan.

“The crowd loved the heaving, squashing, groaning, grimacing, laughing, carousing, yelling, and shoving. But the best was yet to come. Instead of melting, one by one, to a finish, the shrine bearers deliberately caused a crushing pileup, sending the delighted bystanders fleeing to the safety of the guard-railed sidewalk with the shrines in reckless pursuit. The spectators were thrilled by the display of festival mayhem (matsuri sawagi). This was more like a “really real” festival, raucous and rambunctious! As I groped my way out of the pulsing rush-hour throngs, I overheard one adventurous elderly woman exclaim, as she pushed and shoved and clutched indiscriminately, “You don’t know whose hand you’ll come out holding!”
(Robertson 1991, 64)

In large part, the unscripted openings of Japanese festivals were left unscripted to make room for the role of the local deity, whose invisible presence was both the chief alibi for, and the hidden animator for the event.

“Kodaira natives are aware of the deities’ absence from the mikoshi and consequently refer to the citizens’ festival as bereft of authenticity, the implication being that a “real” (shrine) festival is contingent upon a supernatural presence. One participant interviewed at a shrine festival remarked that “without kamigakari, festivals are no fun” (Matsudaira 1980, 98). (Kamigakari refers to both the process of becoming possessed by a kami and the individual possessed.) The same person also remarked that one “can’t kamigakari at city hall-sponsored festivals” because the deity is not present. At the Kodaira citizens’ festival, the countless cans of beer quaffed by the bearers at the two half-hour rest stops apparently compensated for the absence of kami. Historically, alcohol (sake) has been a standard feature at festivals, especially at the social gatherings following a mikoshi procession. City hall apparently had considered banning alcoholic beverages but realized that without beer the “adult” shrine procession in particular would lack the essential zest”
(Robertson 1991, 65).

My neighborhood in Kyoto lacked the vigorous festival participation that Bestor found: there were no feasts, little drinking, and hardly any display of emotion. As the weather was good, some time was found to sit and relax. Small talk and snacks were available for those who dropped by. And the tasks of setting up and dismantling and storing the festival paraphernalia took some cooperative effort.

Here the presence of the kami did not encourage the trance possession that persons in Robertson’s study noted as the core event of a “real” matsuri, although the participants in my neighborhood considered their festival to be both a real festival and a civic event with some measure of importance. But again, I had been warned that Kyoto was not representative of Japan. However, this idea certainly did not match Kyoto City’s self-representation as Japan’s cultural wellspring.

¹Does this tacit consensus reveal an effect of the festival, and, if so, has the festival become trivial because it can only evoke this one response? Bestor does not pursue the field of festivity as a way to open up a critique of the festival.

²Many Shinto “traditions,” particularly festival traditions, were revitalized, reinvented, or simply produced ex nihilo during the late 19th century.