Here’s a video on a Japanese Boat-Burning festival known as Funekko Nagashi which takes place in the northern city of Morioka. The festival is part of the Obon tradition, a time when many Japanese travel to their hometowns to pray at their ancestors’ graves.
Here they contruct makeshift boats, pack them with fireworks, and set fire to them as they float down the river.
Obon is the time for honoring the dead and praying to the ancestral spirits in Japan. Traditionally it is believed that the souls of the departed return to the world of the living and later return at the end of Obon. Many Japanese head to their home towns in mid-August to pray at their ancestors’ graves.
Numerous communities put on dances known as Bon Odori. The most common feature of Obon is the lighted paper lantern floating on the water. People placed lanterns with the names of the departed written on them in waterways. These lanterns represent the souls returning to the underworld, the other world.
The city of Morioka in northern Japan sends the spirits off in style by burning makeshift boats stuffed with fireworks.
Morioka in northern Japan is the capital of the Iwate Prefecture. I went there recently for a festival where they burn makeshift boats for Obon – the festival for honoring their ancestors’ spirits.
In this video I take a look at the city of Morioka itself and talk a little about its past and some of its sites.
Tohoku – the northern region of mainland Japan – likes its summer festivals (matsuri). The whole area in the first week of August seems to erupt with big and grandiose festivals – each one apparently trying to outdo each other in extravagance. It’s like a keeping up with the Joneses (or the Tanakas) affair with each city vying for attention and visitors.
For visitors to Tohoku in August, they have their pick of festivals to attend. With a bit of luck and transportation fiddling, they can almost do all of them or at least a good number.
Morioka’s Sansa Odori Festival has some stiff competition from Aomori’s famous Nebuta Matsuri with its gigantic floats to the North, Akita’s Kanto Festival with its tall, tall lantern poles to the west, and Sendai’s colorful Tanabata Festival to the south. Even many Japanese are not familiar with the Sansa Odori but the festival boasts a procession of 20,000 participants in colorful robes, 5,000 drums, and 600 flutes. Definitely nothing to sneeze at.
Morioka is the capital of the Iwate Prefecture and was founded in 1597. It was a castle town administrated by the Nambu clan during the Edo Period (1603-1867). The origin of name of Iwate and the Sansa Odori are linked to the same legendary event.
The people were so relieved that they put on a festival – the Sansa Odori – to celebrate the devil’s departure. Sansa Odori is held throughout the first week of August. During the day near the train station several dance demonstrations are held. In the evening a long procession is made involving 20,000 people in various colorful attire. Some are dancing, others are playing the flute, but the largest contingent is the drummers.
The drummers carry a miniature taiko drum on their chest with the drum heads facing left and right. The drummers range in ages from grandmothers to toddlers. One would fear that the noise of all these drums would make a horrendous un-rhythmic catastrophe of music. Fortunately, the procession had a pleasant rhythm that was unbroken and quite catchy.
The participants chant “Sansa! Sansa!” and something like “Sakkora Cholwa Yasse” which most Japanese can’t even understand. The phrase the participants chant is a linguistic soup mix of the local dialect and old Japanese with a bit of Emishi for flavoring. The Emishi were the original inhabitants of the Iwate area before they were absorbed after much effort a thousand years ago.
I was passing through Iwate on my way to Aomori and the Nebuta Festival. I knew nothing about the Sansa Odori when I arrive in Morioka. When I saw pretty young girls in flowing dresses near the station, I thought to myself that this bore further investigation. I was not disappointed.
In the evening I watched a two hour long parade of drumming, dancing, and fluting(?). Along with the pretty girls, I saw a number of unique displays of individuality in the shape of Power Rangers, walking vegetables, a group of monkeys that seemed to have materialized from some drug-induced nightmare, and some very unconvincing drag queens.
I heard from witnesses that the Sansa Odori in the past was more uniform in appearance but is now evolving (some say de-evolving) as Japanese society itself changes with the times.
Sociology aside, Morioka’s Sansa Odori is a worthy addition to anyone’s festival schedule while they are in Tohoku in August.