DATELINE: Yamada, Japan
Tuesday, October 22, 2002

Festival.

Men and Boys of Yamada
Carry a Sacred Shrine
To Honor Their Hometown.

By Yamaguchi Shoichiro (Sho),
former IEP student and UCA graduate.

Every year on October 13, my hometown holds the Festival of Yamada.

My hometown of Yamada is situated to the north of Osaka. Where is Osaka? Osaka is almost in the center of Japan! Look at your map.

The festival is very traditional and sacred. I don't know how many times the festival has been held so far. In fact, I don't know for certain about what the festival is for. However, I am pretty sure that the festival is for a good harvest in the fall. That is why the festival is held in October.

What we do during the festival is carry a portable shrine. However, the portable shrine is not a real shrine. It is a big drum. There are four or five 10-year-old children who bang the drum while the men and older boys carry it through the town.

A lot of young guys carry the portable shrine (drum) through my town during the festival. Every boy and man can join the procession to carry the portable shrine if they live in my hometown and want to carry it! The portable shrine is very heavy and hard, so everybody who helps carry it will be so tired and feel a sharp pain on their shoulder. It is really terrible.

Girls and women cannot join to carry it because of Japanese traditional customs. I think women had better not to carry it because the portable shrine is really, really heavy and dangerous.

During the time when we are carrying the portable shrine, a lot of people are looking and applauding us. We all are wearing traditional clothes the whole day. I am not sure if the clothes have some special meanings. Maybe they help us move easily and stay comfortable. We walk in the public road, so all the cars have to stop and wait for our portable shrine to pass. Then, we can feel a superiority complex! Everybody looks at us!

During the festival, we can have a lot of breaks, but that is the biggest problem for people who cannot drink alcohol. During all breaks, we have to drink beer or Japanese sake! A lot of people are drunk, but they can forget they are drunk because of the effort in carrying the portable shrine. We can get pretty sweaty because all the alcohol we've drunk is coming out from our body! Drinking lots of alcohol during the festival is not a big problem. However, I am not so strong to drink, so I don't like that custom.

Anyway, even if we don't like to drink alcohol, we had better get something to drink during the festival. While we are carrying the portable shrine, we have to shout and yell! So after the festival is over, everybody who carried the portable shrine cannot talk normally because everybody's throat is hoarse from the shouting. Of course, I couldn't say anything completely after the festival. However, that's just the kind of feeling that makes us satisfied. We are so exited during and after the festival that nobody cares about being tired.

At the end of the festival, we return the portable shrine to a special place. Before we return it, we walk around the shrine and give thanks to our god. We all show our appreciation for carrying the shrine safely in front of the god.

After we return the shrine to its safe place, the festival is complete. Our long, long day is done, and everybody is really satisfied. Sometimes a few of the men who participated cry because of the great impression the experience has made on them.