I didn’t know how it started, but I found myself wandering down the street, summoned by the pied taiko drummer. At first, I was nervous. Did I belong? What will they think if I come watch? I felt as if I was an unwelcome tourist, shallowly trying to appreciate what was wholly theirs, snapping photos of their quaintness.
They pass my window now as I write this, like noisy ghosts, eerily illuminating the streets as they float by, accompanied by the steady beat of an echoing drum.
My favorite kiriko is the one that my students carry. It is big, and it takes all of their strength to keep it under control, all the while it spouts bubbles into the air as it wobbles too and fro. By the end of the night, I was sure they were all very, very drunk, and they danger, which when felt before was only superficial, became very real. When I mentioned this, the adults put their fingers to their lips and told me that it was a secret.
The children had their own kiriko, and were the only ones to be able to pass beneath the cement torri (gate to the shrine). A festival for a child is always seen through different eyes than that of an adult. When I was young, I loved large social events, excited to see what I had never seen before, and develop a meanings for what was previously ineffable to me. The lights and sounds in combination were like magic. As one grows older, however, the magic is peeled away like a cheap paint, and all one sees are excuses to drink and socialize. Perhaps only the children should be allowed to pass under the torii.
After the earthquake, only one torii survives, arched over the road, beckoning travelers to see what is beyond it. All others are cement, and their permanence is less impressive than the rotting wood of the sole survivor.
I found the other foreigner in Togi, and invited him to come along, although I don’t think it made Kana-chan (Ishihara-san’s other daughter) very happy. His Japanese is not very good, so I fear I will be forced to become his translator.
Going to a matsuri, I discovered, is a lot like playing a very slow game of frogger with rules that only the cars (or in this case, the kiriko) know. Whistles are being blown, sometimes to a mysterious beat, other times, frantically like a warning. What sounds like warnings, are merely ruses, for the real danger only happens when one least expects it.
Unfortunately, all my photos were lost. A faulty memory card is to blame. The last photo I tried to take was of rising moon in the lilac sky, greeting the world through the leaves a plum tree. Perhaps such beauty was never meant to be captured.
That night, I was finally struck by the ceremony of the Togi matsuri. They circled shrine, all shouting their individual calls, slurring them in their liquor induced haze. It was as if hedonism and asceticism had found a way to merge, and they did so by requiring men to carry heavy contraptions (often without padding) for hours upon hours, yet allow them to drink to their heart’s desire.
Bottles of sake were passed around, and I had managed to avoid them until a man who dubbed himself the Japanese Jimi Hendrix forced me to drink. He cut a very funny site, wearing his happi (tradition Japanese coat that represents the neighborhood you are from), accompanied gigantic black, afro wig. He was very impressed that Nick was from New York, and too embarrassed to say that he didn’t know where Colorado was. His friends gathered around us, and I tried very hard to translate drunkenese for Nick. No one seemed to notice that I wasn’t very good at it. We learned many times that his friend had a “japanese tattoo”, because he kept lifting his shirtsleeve and showing it to us. I said that looked like it hurt, and he grinned at me. “It did,” he said.
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