Celebrations in Cities— from media to management
- “When the Man from Earth prepared to leave, he looked back once more at the Green Star city that had seemed to be so much like the life he knew at home. But now he saw the different levels all at the same time—the modern factories inspired by earth, yes; but also the fields of golden rice and the diligent people, between the onslaughts of storm, affectionately caring for their land and its produce. And he knew they would be singing in their festivals as long as the towns bred new towns, just as the pollens renewed the cycles of the plants. “
The Green Star is Japan, and Earth is the Earth—outside of the archipelago.
And festivals inform a naturalized (literally) national narrative of continuity in this piece of fanciful Nihonjinron from a book written for foreign visitors from Earth to the Green Star of Japan:
Here is JAPAN.
Here I wish to focus not on the representations of space in commercial media, but rather on the role that city/state government plays in generating spaces through programs that are designed to memorialize certain spaces and practices. For it is against this type of monological historical imagination that the festival communities under study construct their central1 tactics. In Lefevbre’s term, these festivals counter state-sponsored representations of space through the creation of novel spaces of representation.
Festivals too, are lived spaces, ongoing works that occupy the memories of those who first entered them as children. The familiarization of festival representations is rarely stable (a common complaint of older festival goers is how different the event was in their youth). Indeed, the current velocity of changes in material cultural practices, and in the media available for expressions, means that people in Kyoto and most other modern cities, live in spaces that are almost completely representations of spaces—simulacra of places that are largely unfamiliar, or familiar only in that they resemble so many other spaces. Most adults have experienced learning that their childhood spaces have either been remodeled or completely altered.
The participation of children in festivals opens these up to early attempts at self expression and public participation. Here they dance a “may-pole” dance, and also see how difficult life is for those in wheelchairs.
From the 1993 Higashi-kujo Madang
While I will also submit that a Practice creates its place and reproduces this creation when it is repeated, there are also other preexisting inputs to the construction of the space. There are built-in features of a place that make a space available to be reimagined—or that close this down to new imaginings. And one of the important representational aspects of a place is its self-professed historical imagination.
- Kyoto’s Gion Matsuri as this was portrayed in the NHK TV special on Kyoto’s 1200th Anniversary Celebration.
“Kyoto hates Kyoto. It is probably the world's only cultural center of which this is true. The Romans love Rome. Beijing suffered greatly during the cultural revolution, but most of the damage was wreaked by outsiders, and the citizens of Beijing still love their city. But the people of Kyoto cannot bear the fact that Kyoto is not Tokyo. They are trying with all their might to catch up with Tokyo, but they will never come close. This has been going on a long time....the people of Kyoto never for gave Edo for usurping its place as capital. When the Emperor moved to Tokyo in 1868, that was the final blow to Kyoto's self esteem. While Nara and other cities have also been uglified, this was mostly the result of thoughtless city planning. In Kyoto, however, the destruction was deliberate.”
(Kerr 1997, 158)
The main civic celebrations in Kyoto are meant to be simultaneously current and historical—a desire that leads to certain practical dilemmas. The imperial pomp of the “Big Three” Kyoto festivals (Gion Matsuri, Aoi Matsuri, and Jidai Matsuri) has become ironically pomp-ous because of the prolonged, intentional absence of the emperor in Kyoto. For in 1868, the emperor did not simply leave: he moved the entire capital, and all of its attendant cultural and administrative services to Tokyo. (The resulting acephalous leadership condition might, at some level, explain the City’s failure to capitalize on the wealth of historical architectural and urban facilities over the last hundred years.) Today, he (now the emperor Heisei) rarely returns to Kyoto, although various organizations cling to their tenuous hold on a claim of former court connections.
- “It is changing so swiftly, this mid-twentieth century Japan that you, the visitor will see. For the Japanese themselves, the pace of change is so swift that they sometimes wonder what they have lost, what they have gained, and what the final balance will be...”
Introduction to the Visit to a Green Star in the book Here is JAPAN, 1964, n.p.
History is said to imbue
the places where it is also, occasionally, celebrated and paraded. Kyoto
relies on the residuum of its many religious and imperial buildings and
monuments, almost none of which are managed by the city, although they are
protected by national historical preservation measures.
The city parades an image of its (constructed) historical continuity. Kyoto’s civic spectacles are said to portray 1200 years of continuous, unbroken tradition, even though all three of its main tourist events have been refashioned in the last 100 years for this purpose.
The Byoudo-in is the only building of any size still remaining in the Kyoto area (it is in nearby Uji) from the Heian period. Mysteriously it survived through eight hundred years of abandonment and neglect, until post-War Japan rediscovered it. Now it is also on the reverse side of the one-yen coin.
There are other historical discontinuities that get elided in the official presentation of civic history. It is also against these celebrations of history that counter-celebrations have been organized. And so it is this practice of presentation of history where I will focus my next argument.
histories of histories
There are many volumes of histories written about Kyoto, and even volumes of histories of precincts in Kyoto (although Minami-ku—Kyoto’s South District—has not been honored with its own historical tome). As the thousand-year long home of the Japanese imperial family, Kyoto is mindful of its national historical stature. Within its boundaries there are numerous sites that are officially acknowledged as national treasures, and several places that are still managed by the Japanese imperial household. It also contains several major religious landscape/architectural sites, due again to a desire for proximity to the emperor. History in Kyoto is, in fact, almost entire a site-centered commodity. There are only a few small areas of the city that have maintained an ambiance that recalls some earlier mode of use.
In the 1980s, Kyoto’s leaders attempted to add international platform to its self promotion as the “hometown” (furusato) of Japan’s culture. They convened the Conference of World Historical Cities in Kyoto, and this conference has grown into an organization that still cannot replace the subsequent, and obvious absence of Kyoto as a city on UNESCO’s list of historical cities2. At the last convening of the Conference of World Historical Cities, held again in Kyoto to mark the City’s 1200 anniversary, most of the reports from other member cities showed an appreciation for large-scale preservation and a continuity of general social and cultural skills that are conspicuously lacking in Kyoto’s token attempt at “Heritage management.”
1The Madang festival does comment on capitalist representations of space, but it is more focused on countering the official nationalist stories of local places.
2UNESCO does include “the temples of Kyoto” on this list, thereby signaling the lack of an historic cityscape in Kyoto.
