It a holiday weekend here (Respect for the Aged Day), which in the modern era means matsuri galore. Seasonal festivals which were spread around the calendar in olden days have tended to be herded onto holiday weekends now, to allow maximum exposure to workers and families with kids in school.
Autumn matsuri abound in Japan of course (as elsewhere), it being harvest time and all. This weekend saw several float festivals around Kansai (the biggest being the huge – and dangerous – Danjiri Matsuri in Kishiwada). I went to a slightly smaller event a little closer to home, the Futon Daiko Matsui at Mozu Hachinangu in Sakai (southern Osaka). Taiko being a passion of mine and never having attended a futon daiko before, it was a natural fit. Hachiman is a war Kami of course, so the original meaning of this matsuri was connected to conquest and battle, but that’s not much discussed these days.
Futon Daiko festivals are native to Osaka and the surrounding region, and feature large floats with a huge odaiko drum built into them. They weigh around two tons and are shouldered by several dozen men, and inside the float are 4-6 boys who looked to be around 11-13 called Noriko (literally “riding children”). The boys and men have a call-and-response chant as the boys play the drum using ropes which hang into the basket they ride in. As is the custom with these matsuri, each float represents some or other neighborhood group, and in turn they make the rounds of the shrine to ecstatic crowds before heading off to tour the streets and eventually return to the shrine. The contrast between the deep pounding of the odaiko, muffled by the futons, the powerful bellows of the men, and the breaking voices of the noriko was quite a striking experience.
Also, the Maruzen-Junkudo combo store in Umeda consistently has the best manga displays in Kansai, and Osaka finally has Chicago-style pizza – the hilariously named “Drunk Bears” adjacent Hankyu Umeda Station. While it suffered from the usual bugaboos of Japanese pizza – too-sweet sauce and too-bready crust (not enough shortening) on the whole it was better than I expected.
