There aren't many American holidays that the Japanese follow, naturally, but they are interested in some.
There's Christmas - apparently this is a popular date night in Japan, supposedly it's romantic
There's Valentine's Day - but this is a holiday where women give men things, and it's really a holiday for men. Because the men have one month to prepare for White Day, where men must give women things and it's a holiday only for women.
Some families go to KFC on Thanksgiving, but it's not really a holiday.
And then there's Halloween: A time of year when all should remember to carve their pumpkins with the following:
So last week was Obon, like a Japanese Dia De Los Muertos, where the spirits of our ancestors return to us and we offer them food and drink and entertainment.
The offerings go on the family altar, usually some fruit and some rice (this is when you put your chopsticks in the rice sticking up), a glass of water and/or some sake (or awamori in our case).
The entertainment?
Eisa, of course.
We live in Okinawa City, which boasts the best Eisa teams in the country; so each section of the city (Goya, Takahara, Awase, etc.) has a team that goes through the neighboroods playing during Obon.
I was working on the last blog when I heard something, I opened the window and this is what I saw:
I grabbed my wife, who was recording another gorgeous song, and we ran downstairs to find the dancers. And what do you know? They came to us!
These teams rely on the patronage of the neighborhoods, so they will come around with a collections box. We live next to a conbini (convenience store) so we bought them a 6-pack of beer and a few liters of water and gave them Y1000 (we're not sure what we're supposed to give so this seemed to cover all the bases).
So, what happens when two Eisa teams meet while doing the rounds? Well, they have to battle, of course.
The two teams will face off where both teams have to try to maintain the rhythm (because although the songs are the same name, each group has a slight variation of the traditionals). If someone on your team gets off beat you lose and your whole team has to get out of the way and let the others through. To determine this a crowd is really necessary and so the teams really try hard to avoid heavily trafficked areas unless they think that they are rock-solid.
We went to the Goya neighborhood (near Koza Music Town) because we heard that the two best teams in Okinawa, Goya and Senda (spelling?), have a tradition on the last night of Obon of squaring off. On the way we saw these folks:
So, we went down to Yonabaru to witness the 400 year old tradition of an all-city tug of war. I really wanted to see the big rope (that takes a year to make) and just take some pictures, maybe have a beer and that would be it, really. But I was wrong. It was much more than that.
First off, any where I go I will be singled-out and subsequently press-ganged into the affair. That's what I get for being 6'6" and so gaijin. (There's this one guy that renounced his American citizenship and has been writing editorials for years now in the Japanese newspapers about how unfairly he's treated in Japan for not being Japanese (looking). But, maybe I've been here for too short a time, I always feel welcome wherever I go in Okinawa and I can barely say, "my name is Paul, sorry my Japanese is so poor.") But I've digressed....
Yeah, just as I'm watching the guy giving the instructions on how to do this whole tug o' war thing (I had assumed this was a practiced team I was looking at), then I'm told that I need to put on this hachimaki (head band) and go pick up the rope for the parade through town.
I felt bad because the guy they paired me with was nearly a foot shorter than I and so he really couldn't carry the rope with me. There I am in the hot, hot sun in this procession with this enormous rope. The rope's so big that there are people standing on it, dressed in ancient ceremonial garb. All I can think is, "great, this guy's gonna get killed 'cause I drop the rope or I'm making the rope tilt too much." Meanwhile there are all these photographers and tourists coming up and taking pictures of this giant white guy carrying the rope being followed by a much smaller, slightly embarrassed Okinawan.
We get there and I'm freaked out: there are hundreds of people there waiting around and I know that we are to drop the rope by dropping the heavy logs that we've had propped on our shoulders to carry this enormous rope. I know that I have to be careful because they are going to throw the logs backwards (toward me) and then we are to start pulling as quickly and as hard as we can.
Somehow they are able (I still don't understand even though I was right there in the front) to thread the two loops together and then, completely by surprise to me, they start tossing the logs over their shoulders. I'm wearing flip flops and there are really big logs being thrown at me and I'm being bumrushed by the villagers as we being this all city tug o' war. I'm sorry there are no photos or videos of this singular experience, I am happy to report that I was not injured nor did I lose my flip flops. We won the first one, I didn't realize there would be a second one (including picking up the rope and threading them together again - even getting the people back up there on the rope!) and so the second one I was wiped out. But it's good because both sides got to win.
Then the second competition really gets going. Each side has a couple of standards on long poles with flowers. The musicians and dancers get everyone all frenzied up and the two sides see who can endure hoisting their standard up the longest. Crazy site.
At the end everyone takes a bit of the rope and puts it up at home or their business for goodluck for the next year.
We got some waters and drove to the 10,000 Eisa Dancers Parade in nearby Naha and that was pretty awesome. Then we went to an Okinawan restaurant and we ate the yummies like goya champaru (stirfried bitter melon with tofu) and mimiga (the skin of pig's ears), and listened to a guy play sanshin and sing the Okinawan standards, like "Haisai Ojisan (Hey Uncle)" and "Shima No Uta (Island Music)" and then we topped it off with my new favorite desert - Okinawan Zenzai, but that's another blog posting in itself. Before returning to our homes we made a night time visit to Shuri Jo, the ancient capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom. It was a beautiful site, all lit up at night.
So, my wife and I and some folks from the lab are participating in an EISA team and we've been practicing for about a month or so... and it rules.
This weekend we went down to (Yonabaru first, but that's the very next blog) Naha to see the end of the 10,000 Eisa dancers parade.
Eisa seems to have derived its name from a Buddhist chant and is celebrated at the end of the Obon festival as a "one last hurrah" for the ancestors. More at wikipedia.
So the original Eisa dances would have looked something like this:
This team is from Uruma City, where we work.
Okinawa has, over the last century, been developing a more and more energetic dance:
The central region of Okinawa Honto (the main Island) is really renowned for their Eisa teams, and so I feel really honored to represent Okinawa City in the Zento (All-Island) Eisa Festival at the end of August.
Typically the Eisa team will have the sanshin players and singers, big drummers (that's what I'm practicing), the smaller drums, dancers (female and male dances are slightly different), and then a clown-like character that whips everyone into a frenzy. We feel fortunate to be able to participate as usually women are not allowed to play drums and this is really more of a young man's event - oh, and usually no gaijin.
Where we practice is in an old folk's home and I really enjoy getting to practice in front of them because they get all jazzed up and start clapping and singing and I really feel like I'm participating in a deeper human community. I feel honored to welcome their ancestors for one last dance until they come next year. Even more profoundly, sometimes, I feel trusted, a deep trust that is easy to overlook maybe. Some of these folks can't leave their rooms, so they sit up in their beds and they dance and sing and clap. Maybe they will be the ancestors that will come next year during Obon. On the opposite of the spectrum, though are these little kids running around, also practicing these dances and the cycle is just really moving. That's when I feel the strongest need to show my ki-ai that's what all the shouting is about: it's the bellowing of the living, it's a connecting of the heart and the body and mind in an affirmative SAH and I feel so much more alive and grateful for that gift.
In my confucian studies I've come to understand that truth means something different, perhaps more, in a confucian world. What is true is behaving in a way that is true to those who have come before you (those you learn the Eisa dance from) and behaving in a way that can be trusted by those to come (the kids who watch us and practice what we do). And these practices really deeply resonate with me on this level, I feel like this is the most concrete expression of that definition of performative truth; and I feel more convinced that this is the notion of truth that more people should come to know and express.
So, about 2,500 years ago in China there began this festival of racing boats across a river. This has become part of the annual Summer Harvest rituals of East Asia since antiquity. The tradition comes to Okinawa by way of China, with whom the Okinawans have strongly identified over centuries of trade, but that's another post.
The point is: Every year on the Lunar calendar 5/5, East Asia celebrates this festival. In Okinawa they call it a Haari, others call it Matsuri, I call it fun. Before the race can begin the village assembles at the village shrine (where their ancestors dwell) and ask for them to join in the celebration, then they play drums and walk to the harbor's kami (something like a spirit) shrine and ask for favorable conditions and their influence to get a really good race going. Then a costumed group goes out into the water to show how its done:
Our Institute is currently building an amazing facility in Onna Village and to be good neighbors we entered two teams (one boys and one girls) for the race. This race is not so much about having a bunch of strong folks as much as having a tightly synchronized group.
The men did really well, but there were some really great mens teams out there. The women's team did even better than the men's but, were just 4 seconds short of the finals. We didn't win the cup (made of Ryukyu Glass, of course) filled with Orion beer. But we did win two gorgeous fish, and we promptly ate them as sashimi and in a soup at the after party.
So there's Valentine's Day in Japan, but it's not quite like in the U.S.
In Japan, Valentine's day is the day that women give men chocolate, and it's pretty free of the stresses of Valentine's day in the U.S. But, then there's White Day.
White Day is the Japanese Valentine's Day, for the ladies. On White Day the men are expected to give the ladies a little chocolate, maybe a small gift. But, again, you give these gifts to all the ladies that you interact with on a daily basis and so it is somewhat freed from the stress of finding a Valentine like in the U.S.
I work in an office with several wonderful ladies and so I thought I'd do right by them and by a box of chocolates for them to share.
I found a nice box, it even had a nice little message on it and that little symbol I see on gifts. I thought, "sugoi, I've found just the right thing, the ladies will be pleased." Wrong. The following morning another Westerner asked one of the Japanese speaking ladies what the message on the box I purchased for them said, and she quietly shared that it says, "Congratulations on Passing Your Examinations." Being the wonderfully polite woman she was she also said that this was a good gift I got because this is the time of year when students are taking exams...but we both knew that it was pretty funny.
Who knew that there was a St. Patrick's Day Parade in Koza, Okinawa City? There sure is. I missed the parade but did get to stroll around the Park Avenue area. Koza is the music capital of Okinawa and what says Erin go Braugh more than crumping (a highly-stylized street dance from the West Coast of the US)?
Not only is there a parade, but there's live music all day and night and a little flea market where I saw this:
