THE GREAT DISRUPTION 2

Culture

The Great Disruption 2

Culture

In less than a month, we’ll have our local Matsuri.  It will be the first time in 5 years.  Five years ago, my now 10 year old was looking forward to playing drums for the first time as a full fledged member of the Ohayashi (festival music troupe) and had practiced hard for most of that year.  Sadly, a typhoon hit on the day of the festival forcing its cancellation.  This means that my ten year old has waited half his life to be able to play in our festival.

The practice season, if you will, begins begins after the new year and is once monthly until a month or a little longer before the Matsuri when it is held weekly.  After the October date, no practice until March or April the following year.  Weekly practices are hard on many people’s other obligations so they take the rest of the year off as this is a busy time for many.  The panic began before practice did in 2020, so no group practice since Oct 2019 until a few weeks ago.

As I feared, many have moved on with their lives and found other things to do.  For some, it may be nothing more than you can not expect a child to wait half their lives, or they’re about, to restart something.  For others it is likely due to age specific activities.  Indeed, we just learned that our 4th grader can not even participate in the first day of the festival.  The night before, the music sets up and plays in front of the mikoshi that is displayed the day before it is carried.  He is now enrolled in a cram school and he has to take a test that evening.  He can and will play the next day through.  How many of the other kids are in either of these categories?

One family we met through the matsuri group and my family started getting close.  Before the panic, we all went out together at a restaurant in a near by town that brews their own beer.  Their food is excellent as well.  Family owned and operated, the service is also excellent.  I do not recall if it was one of the flutists of our group who introduced it to us or we invited her once we learned about it and it being close to her coffee shop, but we have gone there with her too.  But all that was before the panic.  This family has not attended any of the practices for this years festival.  Their involvement with it relates ours by years.

So to a girl in the ten years olds swim team and her mother.  The girl is just a few hundredths of a second shy of making the junior Olympic swim team.  A friends of my kid’s joined on their invitation just before the typhoon cancelled festival.  This friend is the only other student in my kid’s 4th grade class who took off the mask as soon as allowed.  These two remained the only unmasked in that class until returning from summer vacation.  He and his mother have not returned to practice.   

Then we have those who are no longer with us, there last years deprived of the fellowship more their neighbors and fellow festival participants and we of their expertise and friendship for years before their passing due to the paniced restrictions.  Another because his wife is now extremely ill and he must be constantly on hand to look after her medical needs.  Besides my wife and 10 year old, only the two leaders, a drummer and a fifer, were at the last practice.

That’s on the music side of things.  On the mikoshi carrying side, we were unable to set the date of the festival until we got clearance from the city and from the neighborhood association, the Chokai, to hold it.  They we not sure if they could grant it to us as the cases are still going up.  The date was set just one month before hand.  The mikoshi is carried through the streets which requires assistance from the local fire company who act as traffic control.  But they require a three month advance notice in order to provide enough man power and to notify cognizant authorities of the road closures.  Thus, the route is reduced to an extremely short path, basically around the block.  What was once an all day event will be finished in the span of a single hour.  If we are lucky.

The sad fact is that despite all the news coverage and the tourist fliers and the like, the Japanese Matsuri has long been an endangered species.  Many were brought back after the war but have faded away.  My Chokai WH I neighbors the one which who we matsuri with, sold their mikoshi quite some time ago.  We do not have a matsuri in our neighborhood.   Those that do still have matsuri do not have enough members to carry these massively heavy mikoshi on our own.  So we all have informal networks with our festival groups.  They come to our festival, we rent them hanten/happi coats and we treat them to beer and food.  When they have their festival, we exchange favors.  But we announced just 4 weeks in advance.  Simply too short notice for many who could otherwise be counted upon to help out.  We very well may not have enough bodied to even lift the thing off the saw horses to say nothing of carrying it on our shoulders around even just the block.  We simply do not know yet.

My city’s main shrine held their first matsuri in 4 years, they held it in the typhoon 5 years ago, last year but it was changed so drastically that all that made it unique was erased.  Will they bring back those important differences this year?   Is not, will the families that support the shrine and this festival continue to donate time and money when what made this special to them has been removed and when children have been banned?

Will our own festival survive?   If so, will it be in the much diminished state that we must accept for it this year, or possibly even worse?  1 I joined solely to support my kid’s interest in drumming with the Ohashi troupe.  If he can no longer do so for I have little reason to continue.  There are a great bunch of guys and I will miss their fellow ship, but going to the meetings has caused friction within my family that we could do without.  I certainly can go with out given the reason I attend is not for myself.  But, that is getting a bit too personal.  Let me just say that regardless of my personal desires to help keep this tradition alive, it’s would be better if I did not continue membership with this group once my kid can no longer participate.   

There is a park roughly two blocks away.  They used to hold a Bon Odori festival there one night each summer.  We never knew in advance when it was to be held, but we would hear the music and go on over after the kids quickly climbed in to yukata or jimbei.  There, they would meet all their neighborhood friends and run around a play as the parents drank draft beer and my wife and I enjoyed the freshly popped popcorn.  They did not hold it again this year either.  They have many of the same issues we have with our festival but just decided it was not worth it.  It was so nice to, on the spur of the moment be able to enjoy that magical night each summer.  Is that too gone forever?  The kids certainly have been deprived of it for a huge portion of their lives.

But it is not just the destruction of these cultural events that are and increasingly were the heart of community in Japan.  “Leaders” of various levels of government have recommended New Years not be celebrated as it should.  For those who do not know Japan, think not Christmas and New Years being reversed.  Christmas in Japan for the Japanese is much like how we celebrate or hope to celebrate New Years in the States, especially when young.  Japanese New Year is much like our Christmas.  They travel home or to their parent’s hometown for a quiet family holiday.  We were told we should not travel out of our prefectures for these last few new years and if we did, not to return unless the picture of perfect health.  Many followed these “recommendations”.  Schools and companies helped enforce these I am sure.

And, it is not just Japanese holidays and cultural events that have been cancelled or changed beyond recognition.  In the States Thanksgiving and Christmas travel was effectively quashed for many due to flight restrictions, reduced air capacity and closed hotels.  Finding your away around these, many were banned from attending unless vaxxed.  States forbade churches from holding Easter services.  A Canadian pastor who was recently sentenced to 60 days in jail for a sermon he gave to the truckers protest in that country filmed himself throwing the police out of his church when they tried to stop his Easter Day service.   Is there a religious celebration that has not been either banned or greatly reduced at some time these past 3 years anywhere in the world?  I can think of one possible one, but I would need to verify that before posting.

Whether religious holidays, cultural festivals or even sporting events, we have been given the choice to alter them in some way, reduce the numbers of participants and or spectators in some way or cancel.  And we have allowed them the power to dictate such to us.