Summer’s Eventful End

A couple weeks ago Tsubata had its yotsukado matsuri, which means “four corners festival”. In this event the inhabitants of the four historical neighborhoods of the town proceed along their routes, sporting traditional instruments and a giant lion costume operated by a mass of people, to the final showdown at the town’s crossroads along the main shopping and nightlife street. With anticipation I went out to see this last bit at around nightfall, having heard the clash of the neighborhoods could get quite rowdy. This was the first festival being held since Covid, the last one apparently resulting in the police breaking up a big fight, so I expected there to be a lot of energy on display. The familiar echoes of traditional flutes and drums of the past month soon melted into the roars of a crowd as I crossed the bridge and got closer to the meeting point. Tons of people were packed in to watch the show and I saw many of my students, who greeted me excitedly and introduced me to some of their parents. Moving to a good vantage point, which is not all that difficult being a head taller than most of the crowd, I started to watch the dance.

It’s called shishimai, “lion dance”, and it consists of two synchronized dancers, equipped with (plastic) swords and giant blonde wigs, performing in the center of the street. After a couple minutes they approach the lion of their respective neighborhood and give it a slash, wounding it. It took four or five of these dances to finally slay the beast, with intermediate pauses for the lions to run at each other, for some reason. This is the notoriously unruly part and there was a lot of shoving and a couple thrown punches, but mostly holding back of the most gung ho participants. Some of my middle schoolers were part of the lion from my southern neighborhood, but they were all stationed at the rear, I’m assuming out of at least some concern for their safety. I did see, but first heard, one of my elementary schoolers on his dad’s shoulders blasting a vuvuzela of all things near the lion to the west. When all the lions were dead they met in the middle in a show of friendship, and then the event leaders of the neighborhoods, eight in full, met at the center of the street and took turns polishing off a massive sake bottle. The whole festival was quite the spectacle and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but when asked about it the next week by anyone I couldn’t help but add 「訳わからんかったけど」 which means, “but I just didn’t get it.”

The end of one of the lion wounding sections.

The feel good ending to the hectic evening, complete with vuvuzela.

The week after the festival both of my schools had their “sports day” events. The closest thing to sports day that I can think of is our elementary school field day, where students spend the day playing various games and sports and competing with each class. However, it really isn’t that comparable. At the elementary school all the classes are divided into two teams, red and white, which the keen of you have noticed are the colors of the Japanese flag. The red and white dichotomy goes back to a Japanese civil war 1,000 years ago in which two clans, the Taira and Minamoto, vied for control of the country, sporting red and white as their respective clan colors. The Minamoto clan eventually defeated the Taira and established the Kamakura shogunate, the first samurai government. And now, almost every competition involving two teams pits a red team against a white one. Until recently however, there were more teams involved on sports day. But with the aging and decreasing population outside the major cities of Japan, the student population has shrunk to the point where having more than two would stretch the teams thin. I didn’t notice at first because the class sizes are anywhere from 25-40 kids, but, having familiarized myself with the layout of the buildings, it’s become very apparent that there is at least one empty classroom in each grade’s section at either school. One of the elementary school teachers remarked that this was quite sad on sports day, because this way there would only be one winning team and one losing team. Such a lamenting remark, with the characteristic Japanese sentiment of striving for group harmony, towards a ubiquitous modern Japanese event represented by the colors of deeply important cultural heritage. My head is spinning, how about yours?

At the middle school, the teams are divided into five colors. The extra colors are blue, green, and purple. Not sure of any significance. Both schools have typical sports day events like various footraces, and massive tug-of-war battles between dozens of kids on either side, but the middle school also has a choreographed dance sequence organized by the third-year leaders of each team. They took the last class period off the whole week prior to work on this portion of the day and I was excited to see it come to fruition. The elementary sports day was planned for a Tuesday, and the middle school’s was for a Thursday, both theoretically allowing me to see them. However, it was cloudy all week and the dark threat of rain loomed large overhead. Tuesday morning was wet, but the elementary school held the opening ceremony and some events in the school gym. It cleared up by noon, and the students were able to run their races on the track outside. Thursday was a downpour so the middle school pushed their sports day to Friday, and despite my head teacher’s best efforts to convince the elementary school to let me show up it just wasn’t in the cards. Oh well, there’s always next year. I had helped set up some of the equipment for the elementary school’s so at least I got to see that through. And there by the final tally, the mechanisms of which I know nothing about, the score was 680-632. The white team had won.