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Japan
 Photo: Casey Anderson
Japan
 Photo: Casey Anderson

Japan: Tradition and Ear-Boxing (cont.)

The shrine bearers are off and stomping. They will shout, strain, and sweat their way to sixteen stops along the winding course through Kitakami-town. At each designated stop, usually a house, the shrine is bucked, heaved, raked through the ground, yanked, and dropped, all to please the kami riding inside and bring good luck and health to the house and its surrounding neighbors.

In appreciation of the blessing, each of the fifteen houses visited is opened to town officials and Mikoshi festival VIPs. Outside, family members and neighbors offer spectators a wide variety of foods, drinks, alcohol, music, and games for the thirty minutes between the Mikoshi’s arrival and departure.

Through the window of the first house, I’m able to catch a glimpse of the colorfully robed priest and priestess kneeling and speaking quiet words of blessing from their position at the head of a long, low table. I recognize the back of Nao’s samurai robe, flanked by suit jackets. I crunch down on an apple and chase it with rice wine.  Here, outside, the shrine bearers are finally getting their first break; the first stop, the town bridge, is a mile walk from the shrine grounds behind Nao’s house. The bridge is the only stop that is blessed during every Mikoshi festival, in hopes that it will remain strong against wind, rain, and sun for another half-decade. A few blocks past the bridge, we arrived at the first of the houses to blessed. The Mikoshi is brought to homes of families in Kitakami-town to bring them good fortune and good health.

During the shrine bearers’ brief rest, a dragon slayer twists and tumbles away from a darting green dragon as children and adults alike cheer him on. The narrow streets teem with townspeople, visitors, and even a television crew. I decline a refill of my sake cup and instead swap it for a small can of juice; I’d like to remember the festival.

It’s the Mikoshi’s fifth or sixth stop. The procession following the god in his portable shrine ballooned, shrunk, and ballooned again as I dogged the clogged steps of the shrine bearers on the clogged, claustrophobic roads between close-roofed houses of Kitakami-town. Though I’ve accepted and declined snacks and drinks of all sorts, I’m both hungry and thirsty. It’s becoming apparent that some of the festival-goers have been quenching their thirst for sake on a more than regular basis over the course of the last few stops, too. The drums roll quicker, and the shrine bearers clench teeth and grunt as they shove the shrine in a jolting battle of position. One of the suited VIPs decides he’s going to help out the nearer struggling shrine bearers and jumps into the fray, adding his strength to theirs in their moment of need. He’s unceremoniously grabbed by a flag-waving assistant “drill sergeant”, flung stumbling backwards, and deposited on his rump in a flower bed.

I’m at the back of the crowd, leaning against a fence post at the end of the driveway in hopes of catching the action. I’ve got the camera to my eye, maximum zoom, but in mid-flash a hand clasps my arm and tugs me into the crowd. An older gentleman in a finely woven gray suit has my arm in an iron grip, and he’s cutting his way through the throng of spectators, pulling me inexorably toward the bouncing, heaving shrine. Townspeople parted the way, no doubt seeing that the purposeful old gentleman had a plan for this clumsy, tight-jacketed American.

The gentleman shoves me out in front of the crowd, within a scant few feet of the whirling, jostling shrine, points at my camera, then points at the Mikoshi. I suspect this is universal language for “get closer for better pictures”, and I snap photos as quick as I can before the Mikoshi forces a shrine bearer into my chest and bounces me back into the crowd. The back of the gentleman’s bald head disappears into the mass of townspeople before I can attempt to give him a “domo domo.” Soon Nao appears in the doorway of the house, slips his clogs back on, flashes me a smile and quick wave, and heads for the roadway, the bustling train of Mikoshi participants and revelers fast behind.

We’re now approaching what must be the tenth house. The memory cards on my digital camera are nearly full, while my empty stomach rumbles to the ceremonial drums. An English-speaking friend of Nao’s family, Takuya, explains to me that he can’t answer any of my questions about the Mikoshi festival and that he’s just as dumbfounded as me as to the goings-on, even though he grew up here in Kitakami. Takuya has come home from Yokohama University for a long weekend to visit his family and check out the festival, as well as show me around and offer up his English-Japanese translation skills. He speaks amazingly good English, possibly as well as anyone in the Kitakami/Kohoku area, though he is actually an engineering student.

I begin to relate to him the story about the older gentleman dragging me around a few houses earlier, and, seemingly on cue, the old suit appears from nowhere, once again locking his steel-trap fingers around my arm. I look to Takuya, who only shrugs. “The old man says, ‘come with me.’” Thinking of food, rest, and a little recharge for both me and my camera, I resist the invitation. It’s at this moment that I have a premonition of the finely dressed old man boxing me on the ear and realize exactly who it is that I’m dealing with. In desperation, I snatch Takuya’s arm and drag him with us.                                                          

“Amen.” I say. The Japanese equivalent of “amen” actually, according to Takuya. I lift my head after the solemn blessing and look around, wondering how exactly a guy from rural Washington State ends up at the end of a sashimi and sake filled table next to a Shinto priest. At 6'3", clad in baggy jeans and the too-small purple happi jacket, I am the sore thumb of an American ambassador to Kitakami, Japan’s quadrennial(ish) Mikoshi festival. Sitting amongst a table of suit-jacketed Japanese men, across from a shrine-keeper garbed in samurai-esque ceremonial robes, next to a Shinto priest and priestess, it’s hard not to feel a bit self-conscious. And a lot underdressed. Nao reaches over and fills a glass in front of me. He says seriously, with that almost imperceptible grin, “Please, drink, Casey-san. It is your duty.”

Back on the shrine grounds behind Nao’s house, the sweat-soaked, exhausted shrine bearers set the Mikoshi down for the final time before the climb back up the daunting steps. Nao and several other festival officials speak to the assembled townspeople, now several hundred strong. I click blurry self-portraits of myself with my newfound friends whose names I’ve either forgotten or can’t pronounce, me in my disheveled happi, they in their now festival-stained suits or robes. A few minutes after the speeches end, the crowd murmurs, and I glance around in confusion. A couple dozen Kitakami-town men have supplanted the tired shrine bearers underneath the poles of the Mikoshi. A quick shove from a mysterious hand, and I find myself sliding shoulder under pole. “Drill Sergeant” waves a yellow/orange flag, and next thing I know, I’ve graduated from spectator to shrine bearer. Clumsy, too-tall shrine bearer.

The experience is short-lived: Obviously, the men around me had all been shrine bearers in their youth, and they heaved, dropped, spun, and shoved the Mikoshi around as though they’d spent the last three weeks practicing with the younger men. As I pondered the wisdom of attempting this new experience with a group of Mikoshi veterans, my thoughts were interrupted by an unanticipated change of direction, firmly planting the side of a pole in my chest, swatting me rearwards. Luckily, the small, sharp gravel of the shrine grounds broke my fall quite nicely, and I’m quite sure I came out of the whole experience looking every inch the graceful American ambassador I’d envisioned myself to be,

At the Sato household, after the shrine bearers had negotiated the steep rock stairs and returned the kami to his home shrine, Nao and his son Manibu stand side-by-side for a last picture in their ceremonial robes. As seems to be tradition in many of the Japanese family portraits I’ve seen, the two men stand straight-backed, serious almost-frowns on their faces. The camera flashes; then father and son share a laugh about Manibu’s sore, purpling shoulder. Like the Mikoshi festival itself, it turns out these men are not as they appear to be at first glance. If it wasn’t for the old bald-headed ear-boxer, I’d never have had the chance to experience the Mikoshi festival from the inside. And, it turns out, if it wasn’t for Nao, I’d never be able to call myself a shrine bearer; I found out a few days later over a beer that it was Nao’s mysterious hand that had shoved me into the Mikoshi fray.

I’m not sure, but I think I again spotted that slightest of grins on Nao’s face when he told me.

 

 

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