Every one of the festivals in today’s report was held in northern Kyushu last weekend, the first weekend after summer vacation began for Japanese schools.

Hita Gion Festival

Now designated an important intangible cultural asset by the national government, the Hita Gion Festival (right) in Hita, Oita Prefecture, dates back to 1714 in its present form. The festival is held to pray for protection against illness and disasters caused by the weather. It features a parade of nine elaborate floats whose decorations are based on themes from kabuki stories. These floats are paraded through the town both during the day and at night. They are not merely lifted and taken from one spot to another—the men doing the carrying rotate them and raise them up and down as they proceed. The people of Hita think the hayashi, or musical accompaniment, performed with flutes, taiko drums, and shamisen, is different from others performed in Japan. At the top of the page of this Japanese-language link is WAV file that will give you a sample of the music. You’ll quickly recognize it from the moving musical notes. This link has several photos taken in the daytime at the 1995 festival

Hamasaki Gion Festival

The folks in the Hamasaki district of Karatsu, Saga Prefecture, a coastal town on the Sea of Japan, also have a Gion festival on the same day. Their festival dates from 1753, when a local merchant visited the Gion shrine in Kyoto on business. Passing through Hakata on the way back, he saw the excitement generated by their Gion festival and organized one for Hamasaki. It’s held to pray for protection against illness and for a rich harvest.

There are three floats, built separately and maintained by groups of local fishermen, businessmen, and farmers. Each float is 15 meters high and weighs about five tons, making them among the biggest of any used in Kyushu festivals. The people in Fukuoka reduced the size of their floats with the advent of overhead power lines and stoplights, but in Hamasaki, they’ve decided to keep the height of the floats the same and plan the parade route to avoid any obstacles. It takes 150 men to lug one of these bruisers around town.

The floats are rebuilt every year, and the decorations are based on famous scenes from traditional stories. The Hamasaki festival uses more than 10 hayashi tunes, performed with flutes, taiko drums, bells, and shamisen. There are subtle differences in the tunes played by the musicians on each float, and they change the tune depending on the road conditions. Slower numbers are played when going up hills, and the tempo picks up whenever they round curves.

The highlight comes late at night when the three floats converge on the shrine grounds after their parade through town. The lanterns on the floats are lit and the floats are spun around dozens of times, creating the effect of rings of fire against the backdrop of the night sky. After the festival, the groups responsible for each one completely disassemble them—they will have disappeared by the next morning. Work on the floats for the following year’s festival will begin in six months and finish about two days before the festival starts.

The Omuta Daijayama
Omuta is a former coal-mining town in southern Fukuoka Prefecture, not that far from Karatsu. The festival in its current form is a combination of several local festivals, the oldest of which is the Daijayama Festival thought to have originated sometime between 1640 and 1791. This festival is known for its floats of sea serpents, said to be the symbol of the water god. In later years it was combined with the elements of a Gion festival conducted for the gods of agriculture and as protection against illness.

The big attraction is the sea serpents, however. Each of the six floats is six meters high, 10 meters long, and they require the efforts of 200-300 people to pull through the city. The first part of the festival presents townspeople performing bon odori, the traditional summer festival dances, but the highlight comes after it gets dark. The floats are assembled in one location after their parade through the city. The float carriers start shaking them wildly, and then the serpents’ mouths open to emit multicolored fireworks and smoke. Legend has it that any children bitten by a serpent’s tooth will be guaranteed a healthy, accident-free year.

Years ago, the floats were torn apart at the end of the festival and there was a mad scramble for the serpents’ eyeballs, said to bring good luck. (The Japanese traditionally didn’t mess around during these activities; people used to get killed.) Nowadays, however, a smaller ceremony for getting the eyeballs is held only for children. The floats themselves are still destroyed, and the eyeballs are offered to the divinities at the local shrine. People hang scraps from the destroyed floats on the eaves of their homes to ward off illness and protect the household for the coming year.

The Tobata Gion Festival

The Tobata festival in Kitakyushu, also in Fukuoka Prefecture, dates from 1803. It was held to pray for good health, as a plague struck the area the year before. It has a unique aspect that is shared by few, if any, festivals in Japan.

During the daytime, the four festival floats are paraded around the city decorated with pennants. This is what they look like:

At 7:30 p.m., the floats are returned to a predetermined spot. On a signal, the men responsible for each float swiftly remove the banners and other decorations and strip the floats down to their frames. After columns and crossbars are installed, the floats are decorated with 12 rows of 309 lanterns to form a pyramid. The entire process takes only about 20 minutes from start to finish. The parade starts again, this time with the floats being carried by 50 or 60 men each, accompanied by the hayashi festival music and shouts of “Yoitosa, yoitosa!”

And here’s what the floats look like then:

A bee farmer in Taiwan smiles for the camera recently as approximately 500,000 bees crawl all over him.

According to Taipei Times photographer Chen Mei-nien, the farmer first placed 12 queen bees on his body to attract the others.

Japan’s Star Festival (Tanabata) falls on July 7 every year, following the modern Western solar calendar, but the real date is the seventh day of the seventh month on the ancient Chinese lunar calendar.

Interestingly, in Taiwan, Tanabata (sometimes called “Chinese Valentine’s Day” on the island) is celebrated using the lunar calendar, and this year it will be August 11.

To mark Taiwan version of Tanabata, the Tainan International Chihsi Art Festival will be held from August 6-11, giving tourists an opportunity to experience authentic and traditional Taiwanese customs.

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One of qualities I most admire about the Japanese is their ability to turn everyday activities into an art form or an opportunity for aesthetic appreciation: drinking tea, arranging rocks and gravel in a garden, arranging flowers in a vase, watching carp or goldfish, enjoying cherry or plum trees in bloom…

Painting landscapes on the walls of bathhouses…

This excellent article in the English-language edition of the Daily Yomiuri last week presents the art of penki-e (literally, industrial paint picture) and reports that it is on the verge of disappearing due to the declining number of sento (public baths), especially in Tokyo.

If you think painting a picture on a bathhouse wall is no big deal, you might want to reconsider:

What makes the penki-e painting method stand out from other painting methods is that the artists have to work under severe conditions. They start work early in the morning and have to finish before the bathhouse opens, usually at 5 p.m. So the painter only has about eight hours to complete a large painting, usually about 13 meters wide. Not only do the painters have to work fast, they also have to work in extremely hot and humid conditions.

“It looks easy, but you need special techniques to do penki-e,” Maruyama explained. “First of all, fabric is laminated onto the wall where the mural is to be painted. Then we smooth the surface with glue, and seal the undercoating and paint over it. Finally we paint a picture, and dry it.”

Most of the time is spent preparing the area and drying the painting. Only two or three hours are actually spent painting.

“This is one of the terrific things about penki-e painting,” emphasized Shinobu Machida, a researcher of popular culture and pioneer of sento research. “No other art can create such a big picture in such a short time.”

A pioneer in sento research? Come to think of it, another fascinating aspect of Japan is the number of experts on topics that at first glance don’t seem to be worth examining in detail.

Once again, it’s time to reconsider:

Machida stresses that penki-e is important in terms of art history.

“It adopted Western techniques, which were introduced in the late Edo period. It used light and shade to give contrast,” he said.

The technique is called shadow method, which the versatile and multitalented Hiraga Gennai (1728-1779) introduced into Japan. Shadow method gives the painting various shades of color and makes it three dimensional, in contrast to the traditional Japanese method in which the painter drew an outline and then filled it in with color.

“Before that [shadow method], pictures were flat. The technique was necessary because people viewed the painting through the steam of the bathtub. It needed to look rough up close, but clear from a distance,” Machida explained.

As with many other arts and disciplines in Japan, you just don’t decide you want to be a penki-e artist and then start splashing on the paint. Kiyoto Maruyama, the artist interviewed for the article, first served as an apprentice to his uncle, another bathhouse artist.

“During the first three years, apprentices are allowed to paint only the sky blue. Many of them quit at this point. Apprentices watch the process of painting and learn from the master. Then, they are allowed to paint sides, clouds and, eventually, the whole picture. Usually, it takes six years to get to that point.”

Sounds like the same process and roughly the same amount of time it takes to become an itamae, or sushi chef.

I’m a big fan of bathhouses, but I’ve never been to one that has a penki-e. I like the outdoor baths with their natural views the best. But if you live in a city like Tokyo, this seems to be the next best thing–unless it’s a mixed bath!

UPDATE
After spending some time scouting around the web, I found these Japanese-language sites worth visiting for the photos.

The first one, here, has several fine examples of penki-e. I think it may be the site of the Shinobu Machida mentioned in the article, though I couldn’t confirm it.

The second site, here, has a series of 22 photographs showing the process of creating one painting from start to finish.

The third site has a larger photo of a wall being painted, with many smaller ones of the process.

My favorite sake maven, John Gaunter, knows just about everything anyone anywhere could ever know about sake. And by the way, it’s spelled sake, not saki. How to pronounce it in Japanese? Ask a native speaker.

I love the stuff, nigorizake, that is, and can never get enough of it. I know, I know, it’s dangerous, but life is dangerous!

Listen to what Mr. Gaunter has to say about White Sake in one of his published articles, this one from the Japan Times a few years ago:

“It is all too easy to get all too serious about sake all too often. Ginjo this and ginjo that, highly polished rice, double-secret yeast, fancy fragrance, full palate, clean finish, yada yada yada. Sake in the end should be fun, and nothing reminds us of this better than nigorizake.

We’ve all seen it, the white, opaque sake, found occasionally on shelves around the country. Just what is it, what does it taste like, and how does it differ from regular sake?

Nigorizake is — just as the name implies — cloudy sake. The “cloudiness” is nothing more than part of the fermenting mash, unfermented rice solids left suspended in the sake.”

If you want to learn more, Gautner runs an online sake newsletter here.

A self-proclaimed rightist was arrested in Hiroshima for vandalizing the main atomic bomb memorial there.

Takeo Shimazu used a hammer and two chisels to cut out a hole in the granite memorial to eliminate the word “mistake” from the text, “Let all the souls here rest in peace as we will never repeat this mistake.” When the memorial was dedicated in 1952, then mayor Shinzo Hamai declared that “mistake” is in reference to Japanese miliarism.

“Why should the Japanese apologize in a monument they built? It is the Americans who committed a mistake,” he was quoted as saying by the police.

The memorial has been monitored by a surveillance camera since another vandal defaced it with paint in 2002.

A night of “sake bombing” in New York guarantees a ritualistic drinking marathon, perfect for large groups, or dates that will end shamefully sometime the next morning. Of course, it’s critical your go-to spot has low prices, above-average sushi and almost limitless free-flowing sake.

Here’s two hot spots. . .

A place called “Cube 63″ (telephone owners Ken and Ben at 212.228.6751) at 63 Clinton Street in Manhattan is a raucous, shoebox-sized, Lower East Side BYO where they’ll laugh in your face if you arrive with less than 2 magnums of sake and a case of Sapporo beer. Here, you can bomb carelessly and wildly without having to worry about scrubbing toilets to pay off your bill. The super-fresh sushi is amazing, and so reasonably priced you’ll shell out less than US$50 for the fish, the booze, and the resulting drunken fisticuffs you’ll have with your date over the last Volcano Roll.

Or try “Azuki Sushi” at 239 Park Avenue South (telephone them at 212.228.3611), just three doors down from “Sushi Samba” but one-third the price. If you order dinner, the sake’s all-you-can-drink, and free. No idea how they can afford this magnanimity, but they do. New York, New York!

Did you ever wonder what a Japanese woman brings to work in her briefcase? Kaori Shoji does, and she gets her friends to show her. One friend explains what a work colleague lugs around every day:

(The woman) shows up at the office with a Coach bag that holds everything from Dr. Scholl’s foot-care goods and a French-Japanese dictionary to kinkyu-yo shitagi (emergency lingerie) and a plastic case containing four different pairs of tsukematsuge (false eyelashes)….

Her briefcase motto: “Totsuzen, kakeochi shitemo daijyobuna yoni (Ready for sudden elopement).” Needless to say, there’s a small cloth case in there with two condoms. Kano says coolly that they should be in all women’s briefcases.

Now that’s preparation worthy of a Boy Scout!

The woman Shoji interviewed, by the way, was packing dried natto in her briefcase.

This reminds me of the scene in Dr. Strangelove when the B-52 pilot, Major T. J. “King” Kong, played by Slim Pickens, briefs the crew on their survival packs:

“In them you’ll find one .45-caliber automatic, two boxes ammunition, four days’ concentrated emergency rations, one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizing pills, one miniature Russian phrase book and Bible, one hundred dollars in rubles, one hundred dollars in gold, five packs of chewing gum, one issue prophylactics, three lipsticks, three pair of nylon stockings … Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.”

Or in Roppongi!

Forget terrorism, the Communist Party of China, rightwing soundtrucks, typhoons and earthquakes. Think HN51.

The world could at any time be faced with massive flu outbreaks like those in 1918 or 1968 that killed tens of millions of people, the World Health Organization is warning, urging all countries to be prepared, be prepared, be prepared.

Bird flu, which has killed 55 people in Asia since resurfacing in 2003, has the potential to become a major human pandemic if the virus were to mutate and allow human-to-human transmission.

The HN51 strain of bird flu, which has killed hundreds of thousands of birds, constitutes one of several “warnings from nature” — the first since 1968, according to WHO.

After Indonesia recently announced its first human deaths from bird flu, and cases were reported in Siberian poultry, WHO has warned that its greatest fear is that human influenza and bird flu could somehow combine to unleash a pandemic on the world.

Yesterday, the Kanto Plain (where Tokyo is located) experienced yet another relatively strong earthquake that had everyone in the city wondering for a split second whether this was the Big One.

In Japan, the magnitude of earthquakes is expressed as shindo values, which are explained below.

• Shindo 0
  Shaking not felt by people.
• Shindo 1
  Shaking felt by some people indoors.
• Shindo 2
  Shaking felt by many people indoors.
• Shindo 3
  Shaking felt by most people. People start to feel fearful.
• Shindo 4
  Imtense sense of fear, some people fear for their safety. Most people who are sleeping are awakened.
• Shindo 5 - Weak
  Most people fear for their safety. Some people have difficulty moving around.
• Shindo 5 - Strong
  People feel intense fear. Many people have difficulty moving around.
• Shindo 6 - Weak
  People have difficulty standing.
• Shindo 6 - Strong
  Impossible for people to stand. Moving around is possible only by crawling.
• Shindo 7
  People tossed about by the shaking. Moving around is impossible.

Yesterday’s quake came only five days after another major tremblor on Saturday. Though the quake on Saturday quake registered only Shindo 5 on the Japanese scale, it was strong enough to stop elevators and threw the trains and subways of Tokyo into chaos.

Scientists say there is a 70% chance of a Shindo 7 quake hitting the southern Kanto within the next 30 years.

Capsule hotels in Japan are popular with local businessmen who miss the last subway home at night, or are too drunk to make it home on their own.

Gangsters use them, students use them, and low-budget travellers use them, too. One night sleepover? Just pay around US$30. Tiny sleeping capsule with flat-screen televisions inside.

Now the concept of the Japanese capsule hotel has been re-born in New York City where the Pickwick Arms Hotel is offering rooms like this with bunk beds, flat-screen televisions and even iPod docking stations. One night sleepover? Just pay around US$100 for two people.

Ice cream may be bad enough for toilet bowl plasticware, but using it to serve curry is just a little too, well, realistic for my taste!

Image via Ohgenki.com

Japan has announced another android that is reportedly more human-like than ever before. The new android, which is designed to look like a female human, is named Repliee Q1.

Flexible silicone skin combines with sensors and motors to enable a range of movement and reactions that make Repliee Q1 eerily human.

She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe.

Professor Hiroshi Ishiguru of Osaka University says one day robots could fool us into believing they are human.

Repliee Q1 is not like any robot you will have seen before, at least outside of science-fiction movies.

She is designed to look human and although she can only sit at present, she has 31 actuators in her upper body, powered by a nearby air compressor, programmed to allow her to move like a human.

According to observers at the World Expo in Japan where Repliee Q1 was unveiled, however, the robot experienced some glitch-related “spasms,” indicating that androids may not be poised to take over the world any time soon.

For more information about the current state of android development, go to World’s Greatest Android Projects.

Thanks to Raymond S for the heads up.

People everywhere love to talk about the regional quirks of their fellow citizens, and Japan is no exception. Japan is divided into 47 entities at the state or provincial level. These are usually called ken, or prefectures, but there are a few exceptions (check out the link for more details).

Quite a few books have been written about the personality traits of the people in each prefecture over the years. Ed Jacobs, writing for Japanzine, puts some of it into English in this article. It’s worth reading, despite the glaring omissions, inaccuracies, and some downright stupidity. Here’s a glance at what he came up with, what he omitted, and the biggest mistakes.

Hokkaido
“The women in Hokkaido are said to be the most liberated in Japan. They have the unusual habit of proposing marriage to their men and are also number one in Japan when it comes to initiating divorces. No one knows whether it’s the men or the women that are to blame, but Hokkaido also has the highest divorce rate in the country.”

One possibility: Hokkaido was not widely settled by indigenous Japanese until the 19th century. The situation is analogous to the settlement of the American West, when the pioneers subjugated the Native Americans (as was done to the Ainu in Hokkaido). Perhaps a residual frontier spirit is the reason for the more assertive women.

Akita
“Say the word ‘Akita bijin’ (an Akita beauty) to a Japanese male and watch his eyes light up. The idea that women from Akita are beautiful dates back to at least the Heian period, and women from this prefecture are famous for their pale white skin. Akita’s women have an average skin whiteness index of 29.6%, making them far paler than the average Japanese women, whose whiteness index is only 26.6%.”

I’ve actually heard more praise for the complexions of Hokkaido women than Akita women. Some people say the cold weather has a lot to do with it. (Think Minnesota) The two prefectures are neighbors, so they share the same harsh winters.

I didn’t know that somewhere in Japan somebody had a “skin whiteness index”, but I can’t say I’m surprised.

Also, there are three Japanese prefectures specifically known for having beautiful women. Fukuoka is another, but I can’t remember the third.

Yamagata
If you like to sleep and eat ramen and hate automobile seatbelts, this is the place for you.

Ibaraki
Jacobs fails to mention the stereotype of the Ibaraki policeman. A high proportion of men from this prefecture choose careers in law enforcement, and the image of the Ibaraki cop is similar to that of the Irish cop in New York City in days gone by.

Niigata
Only five percent of the people in this prefecture continue their education after high school, the lowest percentage in Japan. The people also have a reputation for loving pachinko and horse racing.

Tochigi
Detest karaoke? Don’t go near Tochigi—they love it.

Saitama
“Saitama is the New Jersey of Japan and is widely known as ‘Dasaitama’ (Ugly Saitama).”

This crappy translation utterly fails to convey the clever construction of dasaitama. Dasai doesn’t mean ugly—it’s slang that means uncool, unfashionable, or dweeby. It was then compacted with the name of the prefecture. The rough analogy of the New Jersey of Japan is based on Saitama bordering Tokyo in the same way that New Jersey borders New York, and that many Americans on the East Coast enjoy saying unpleasant things about the Garden State.

Shizuoka
“You’re less likely to die of cancer if you live in Shizuoka than in any other prefecture.”

What the author doesn’t tell us is that Shizuoka is the prefecture with the highest green tea production in Japan. The folks in Shizuoka are more likely to drink green tea as their beverage of choice during the day. And the more green tea you drink, the less likely you are to get cancer.

Osaka
Jacobs tells us that Osakans are the fastest walkers in Japan, like to jaywalk and jump yellow lights, and like to spend money on fashionable clothes.

He forgets to mention in this section that Osaka is famous as a mercantile city—the common local greeting is “Making any money?”—and their well-known dislike of Tokyo. (He mentions their money-making reputation in the Nara section.) Young Osaka women also are known to have a yen for horror movies, the gorier and creepier the better.

Fukuoka
“Fukuoka, despite being relatively rural, is second only to Osaka when it comes to high crime rates.”

The author is right about the crime rate, but is so wrong about Fukuoka that it’s obvious he’s never been close to the place. An error like that should disqualify him from practicing journalism about Japan for at least a year.

The population of Fukuoka Prefecture is about 5 million. It has two—not one, but two–cities with a population of more than one million. The prefectural capital is Fukuoka City, and 1.3 million people live there. Right next door is the city of Kitakyushu, with a population of 1.05 million. And that ain’t counting the concentration of people in the suburbs ringing both of those cities. “Relatively rural”? At least half the prefecture’s population lives in a megalopolis.

Therein lies the reason for the crime rate. The Kokura district in Kitakyushu had an extreme concentration of heavy industry. The huge factories and smokestacks are easily visible from the train window. If you’ve ever been to Gary, Indiana, you’ll get the idea. (Some of the factories have been shutting down lately, however.) In fact, the second atomic bomb dropped in Japan was intended for Kokura. They were very lucky the cloud cover over the city that day caused the bomber’s crew to head for the secondary target of Nagasaki.

The Kokura factories operated full-bore, 24-hours a day, and so required a lot of unskilled manual labor during the night and graveyard shifts. A willingness to show up for work was a more important job qualification than personal character. Guys fitting that description aren’t always model citizens.

Nagasaki
Speaking of Nagasaki, I’ll bring it up here, even though Jacobs didn’t mention it. It’s at the southwest corner of Kyushu facing the Asian land mass, so there is a strong Chinese influence. It also was the only place in Japan where foreigners could reside during the Edo Period (albeit only on the former island of Dejima), so it has always been more open to the rest of the world. Indeed, a relatively high percentage of the population are Christians. (I’ve heard 5% for this area, compared to 1% for the country as a whole, but that’s hearsay.)

A final word of caution

I suggest you ignore completely Jacob’s opening paragraph explaining the reasons Japan has an “emperor” and “empire”. Tack another year on his prohibition for practicing journalism about Japan. Either he or his source (regardless of nationality) is getting carried away by the English words empire and emperor, and forgetting the Japanese equivalents for these words.

To be brief, the Japanese never considered themselves a teikoku (empire) until the period of the Meiji Restoration, when they started to act like one. (The new contact with the European empires might have gone to their head.) The Japanese word for emperor is kotei, but that’s not what they use for Akihito and all those guys. The call him the tenno, or heavenly sovereign.

In fact, the Japanese tenno has seldom, if ever, been viewed as a conquering military/political figure in the way that emperors are. Throughout most of Japanese history, his primary role has been as the head priest of Shinto.

You want someone who led armies and knocked off the local chieftains? Try the shoguns.

At the risk of going overboard on the potty bowl ice cream dishes in Taiwan, here is an image picked up from hitoriki.com.

A Japanese man journeyed from Fukui Prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast all the way across Japan to Mitsukoshi Department Store in the heart of Tokyo in order to purchase a 5.8-million yen (around $52,000) Hello Kitty pendant for his daughter.

The pendant was made in the U.S. using nine carats worth of diamonds on its face, rubies for its ribbon, a sapphire for its nose, and onyx for its eyes. The pendant design became known internationally when pop singer Britney Spears wore one that is similar.