15 matsuri

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The descriptions of matsuri found in English language sources are generally brief (and in being brief, overly general). We find article-length descriptions and analyses of various matsuri (Inoue, Noriaki, Yanagawa), and article-length theoretical descriptions of matsuri. (Harada, Plutschow, Sadler). There is a longer description of a non-matsuri festival in the northeast of Japan (Yamamoto), and there are other accounts of calendrical festivals, such as oshogatsu and tanabata, etc. (Casal, Erskine).

On the Japanese language side, there is an encyclopedic body of literature on the study of various matsuri by Japanese folklorists and local historians. Since the efflorescence of Japanese folklore (nihonjinron) studies earlier in this century, matsuri have been a favorite object of reflexive folkloristic attention (in particular, see: Kunio 1985). These sources provide a welcome record of previous practices for specific matsuri, however, on the main, one expects that they promote the Post-Meiji unitizing description of matsuri, i.e. its correct performance (although local elements are highlighted) and its ahistorical beginnings as described by National Shinto. Other sources run from descriptions of festivals for Japanese tourists (for example, Koma and Asano, 1977), to major works intended for a scholarly audience, such as that of Sonoda Minoru (1990).

The descriptive apparatus of the latter is far more detailed than that of the former, however, such phenomenological works provide little purchase for social theories of human action (however, the more rigorous ethnographic/sociological studies, such as Inoue (1979), Robertson (1991), and Bestor (1989) are exceptions to this general critique, and will be discussed below). There are several reasons for this limit, the main one being a lack of scope—the descriptions of matsuri usually fail to include descriptions of the communities involved as the latter are externally constituted. Instead, the matsuri is presented as complete in itself. Another problem, one common to the ethnographic literature, is a lack of a sufficient problematization of matsuri practices in their time and place. The structuration of the event is not approached apart from its general, and discursively available forms. What then do we learn about matsuri from English and Japanese language sources?

Matsuri ritual forms

Working from various sources on the descriptions of matsuri ritual practices, we find that there is: 1) some but certainly not a predictable overlap in individual descriptions, and 2) a wide range of interpretations from these descriptions. These conditions point to two main problems in the study of matsuri: fragmentary descriptive evidence and a lack of a grounding theory of matsuri. It is difficult to know if the lack of overlap in the descriptions is a product of the description or inherent in the event. A similar problem arises in theory: are the matsuri themselves so different in their functions and meanings, or is this the result of studies disjointed at the level of theory?

The general matsuri ritual script

A basic frame for matsuri performance is provided in Plutschow:

The Shinto festival can be divided into three major sequences. According to Haruo Misumi, most Shinto festivals are thus divided. The first can be called Kami-oroshi (also kami-mukae or kami-are), meaning the arrival or bringing down of the deity: the second, kami-asobi, which means entertaining or placating the deity, and the third kami-okuri (or kami-age), sending off the deity [See Misumi, 1979, 80].(84)

Curiously, these specific terms do not show up in the descriptions of individual festivals, although the three activities, as later described in Plutschow¹, are evident. Again, we find a trifold activity pattern (beginning/middle/end) which might also relate to the now-classical van Gennep structure for rites of passage (separation/liminality/reintegration).

The opening and ending parts of the festival seem laden with boundary demarcating rituals that set off—and also purify—the space and time allotted to the festival. Purification, and with it the notion of pollution, is universally evidenced in discussions of festival ritual (Harada 100, Yanagawa 8, Noriaki 144). In fact, Harada uses purity as the defining feature of matsuri:

“The sacredness of a member of the Uji-ko [worshippers of the Uji-Gami, the village deity] is entirely due to his oneness with the deity and to his life with him. It follows, therefore, that each member of the Uji-ko retains his clealiness [sic] by living such a life as becomes his title. Retaining cleanliness is called kessai or purification. A Matsuri is nothing more than a series of the Uji-ko’s deeds to keep himself clean.”(Harada 1960, 100)

The main types of purification rituals described (See Yanagawa 8) include certain temporary food taboos, restrictions on contact with blood or death, and the hanging of special ropes (shimenawa) in homes and at the boundaries of the village.

The end of the festival often includes a special meal (naorai) which originally would be shared by all participants, but in larger communities is taken by neighborhood representatives (Yanagawa 74). The use of food during the festival, and in fact, a theory of feasting in general is not found in the English language matsuri literature.

The middle period of the festival has been variously described as “a temporary rupture of an everyday pattern that is stable and uniform” (Noriaki 159), an act of communal “consciousness-expansion” (Sadler 16) and, even as a dream: “... the festival brings disparate elements into a single space at a single time. If the festival was previously likened to a drama, here it seems rather like a dream.”(Yanagawa 41)

Of the various activities that occur during this period, one of the main, and perhaps the defining activity of matsuri, involves the parading of the kami in a portable shrine, or mikoshi.

To go among its people, the holy spirit needs a vehicle.... That...is called in Japanese o-mikoshi, and is a splendidly ornamented and decorated gilt carriage, with silken cords and golden bells, and a golden phoenix at the top. It is carried by the young unmarried men of the village, who sometimes fast the day before the festival begins, and spend the night inside the shrine, in the presence of the holy. When the sun dawns on the festival, they don uniform hapi coats (over their undershorts), powder their faces white..., and ... they begin jogging down the streets, zig-zagging all through the town, chanting a work chant, and gradually surrendering themselves to a dizzy state of ecstatic exhaustion. The mikoshi is heavy, and although the elders go along to guide them and to ry and prevent them from injuring themselves or damaging property, the kami-presence gradually takes over, and their procession becomes more and more erratic and exuberant. The kami, with their help, is going among his people’s homes and dispelling evil influences, driving out infirmity, and bringing vital energy to all.(Sadler 1969, 6)

Another type of procession common to larger matsuri are those of neighborhood floats which can be quite large and are pulled along a set route by many men (Noriaki 144, 147; Yanagawa 10). One type of float is large enough to have a stage on which dances are held at various stops. [None of the sources offered an overall typology of the floats used in various matsuri]. Along the procession route are found a variety of artistic displays from drama to dance to poetic readings and music. The history and role of the arts within matsuri, briefly described in Plutschow, deserves a more rigorous examination.

Participants

An important feature of matsuri is that not anyone can participate. The choice of participants in the matsuri and in the ongoing supervision of the neighborhood matsuri activities is made according to several criteria, most of them related to visible social status and rank (Noriaki 141). Thus the festival is seen as a way to display neighborhood identity (Noriaki 147-8; Yanagawa 16) while enhancing neighborhood integration (Noriaki 147-8; Yanagawa 21, 13, 27; Inoue 177-8).

Descriptions of ingroup/outgroup distinctions usually differentiate between some type of “nativeness”. Inclusion at any level is often determined first by consanguinuity and then by household location. To be included one would ideally be born to a family that dwells within the boundaries of the space demarcated for the festival. If a person moves to a new village, inclusion would be determined by this person taking active role in the community, through which she express a lasting identification with this new village. Presumably, participation in the old village’s matsuri might show a conflict of identity. Matsuri is thus often performed by and for the native-born inhabitants of its place (Harada 100).

Recent studies of urban matsuri both reflect and further problematize the notion of inclusion in the matsuri. Robertson (1991) noted that the creation of a city-wide “citizens’ festival (shimin matsuri) still maintained a native/newcomer distinction, even though it was created to bring these two groups together (ibid, 44). Particularly, this distinction was displayed in that segment of the festival event that mimicked other, Shinto-shrine based, festivals (in which the “natives” continue to participate at other times of the year and to the exclusion of the newcomers). Robertson was, of course, describing something different than the shrine-based matsuri: the differences are many, but primarily those of a greater scale, a lack of bounded and transacted placeness (the festival occupied only the main street of the city), the inclusion of a variety of heterogeneous events (activities at various “corners”), and a conflation between the festival organization with that of the city government.

As this new shimin matsuri attempted to import the practices of shrine-based matsuri, it did so with perhaps counter-productive effects. The new festival failed to provide a level “playing-ground”in which the natives and the newcomers could all participate, instead, it reified distinctions it was designed to ameliorate.

These native/newcomer distinctions operate also in urban shrine-based matsuri, as Bestor (1985) described. Participation in the neighborhood’s matsuri was emblematic of recognition of a household’s status as a full-fledged member of the neighborhood, a status which is also marked by inclusion in other activities of the “neighborhood organization” (chookai) (ibid 147) and membership (acquired through economic and performative participation) in the local Shinto shrine².

Today, the matsuri presents a double facade—it is religious and also secular, a time to play with one’s neighbors and also to play with the local deity. There is a wide differential noted in how much of each side any particular individual will cathect (ibid 234).

Beyond function and structure

Bestor (1985) and Robertson (1990) both approach matsuri with a relatively unproblematized approach vis a vis the performative and micropolitical aspects of such activities. (In fairness, neither text was centrally concerned with matsuri per se, although matsuri played a key role in their main arguments, which would therefore have been strengthened—and probably will be ex post facto—by a fuller, more multi-dimensional, description of matsuri) While Bestor outlines the functional organization of his Tokyo neighborhood’s matsuri, this description pays little attention to those who, for voluntary or exclusionary reasons were not included in this event or in other chookai activities. Similarly, Robertson loses the “voice” of the newcomer in her description of the dialogue between native and newcomer. The use of matsuri not only as a tool for neighborhood or civic inclusion, but also as a display of civic exclusion, of marginalization and centrality needs further examination. In addition, matsuri as performances are liable to a variety of aesthetic and experiential critiques—the people who do them and those who watch are aware of the performative failings and successes of such events. The dynamic processes of participation and reflexivity disappears almost entirely in both Robertson and Bestor.

One area of reflexivity that does receive some attention is that which concerns the notion of the kami (deity) and its participation in the matsuri. Robertson discounts Inoue’s (1979) conclusion that a festival without a kami falls outside of the central definition of “matsuri” (39), although she also provides some evidience that Kodaira natives do, in fact support this same conclusion:

Kodaira natives are aware of the deities’ absence from the mikoshi and consequently refer to the citizens’ festival as bereft of authenticity, the implication being that a “real” (shrine) festival is contingent upon a supernatural presence. One participant interviewed at a shrine festival remarked that “without kamigakari, festivals are no fun” (Matsudaira 1980, 98). (Kamigakari refers to both the process of becoming possessed by a kami and the individual possessed.) The same person also remarked that one “can’t kamigakari at city hall-sponsored festivals” because the deity is not present. At the Kodaira citizens’ festival, the countless cans of beer quaffed by the bearers at the two half-hour rest stops apparently compensated for the absence of kami. Historically, alcohol (sake) has been a standard feature at festivals, especially at the social gatherings following a mikoshi procession. City hall apparently had considered banning alcoholic beverages but realized that without beer the “adult” shrine procession in particular would lack the essential zest. (Robertson 1991, 64-65)

The notion that a festival without a kami is “authentic” as long as there is enough beer, while it does open up to the performative aspect of matsuri, it also closes down the affective role of the kami in such performances. Changes in the sincerity of belief about kami are reflexively discursified by the performers in this and similar contexts (For example, see: Ivy, 186). Particularly as the kami is felt to have a special affinity for those who were born and/or have a long tenure in its precincts, such changes would play an important part in the native/newcomer discourse. Also, as Bestor (234) notes, the presence of the kami in the mikoshi is important in that it supplys the motivation (integral to the process of kami-asobi) for the movement of the mikoshi throughout the neighborhood. The movement of the kami articulates the neighborhood as a place apart from its normal description.

Origin of Matsuri

The sources provide minimal information or even speculation on the origin of matsuri. Harada’s view is that in old days farmers worshipped the kami continuously and so were always in a state of purity, and therefore had no need of matsuri. It was only when non-agricultural occupations were made and when the need for agricultural surplus distracted the farmer from his daily worship that matsuri were started to periodically purify the people and the place. Here the dynamic is between purity and pollution.

Plutschow, on the other hand, sees the central dynamic in the dual nature of the kami.

The Shinto festival strongly reflects the belief in local deities who reign supreme over ara, or chaos, but who could be transformed—only in part and never completely—into niki or benevolent deities. Whenever people settled an area and transformed the landscape, they automatically divided the local deity or deities into his or their ara or niki aspects. Throughout Japanese Shinto one can recognize the belief that an uncontrolled evil deity, once appeased, becomes a benevolent deity, and that its original malevolence can be transformed, without losing its power, for the good of the community. (77)

The origin of matsuri then represents the on-going tension engendered by the need to control the kami. This control includes harnessing the protective aspect and banishing the dangerous aspect. An original “deal” appears to have been worked out where the kami is split and his dangerous side contends itself with a small area left undeveloped while his protective side is housed in a village shrine and worshipped constantly. Every year the two sides are allowed to rejoin in the village for a set period of time. This is matsuri. (Plutschow 77).

The discourse concerning the origins of matsuri has been centrally occupied by the notion of matsuri as a purely Shinto event of great antiquity. The history of any matsuri needs to be problematized in light of recent discussions concerning the formation of National Shinto (particularly the breaking up of the Shrine/Temple multiplexes) during Meiji, and the subsequent articulation and spread of “authentic” (e.g., ancient) matsuri activities which reinvented and re-traditionalized these performances during the last hundred years.

Festival and change

A final aspect of festivals is their performative dynamic. As ritual, festival resists change. As performance, festivals embrace it. A tension is thus evident between the role of the festival as a medium of communication and its ritual context. This tension is evident in the description of a new “matsuri,” the Kobe matsuri. While the original idea of the Kobe matsuri excluded any kami, was open to yearly variation in its content, and specifically included tourists, the event is rapidly taking on the traditional ritual and activity framework of a matsuri. (Inoue 177). While the central kami has yet to be determined (and might never be officially included), various neighborhoods have already involved their kami in this matsuri. And so the ritual of the festival frames the communicative aspect, circumscribing attempts at change within matsuri. However, where matsuri is centrally defined by attitudes toward the kami and toward purity/pollution, changes in these will, and probably are having a decided impact on the general attitude toward matsuri.

Inoue alludes to a work by Yanagita Kunio which supports the notion that matsuri has been giving way to other types of ceremony since the fifteenth century:

He [Yanagita Kunio] divided the general category of festivals into matsuri or classical feasts and sairei or religious festivals accompanied by para-festival activities, and he regarded the change from matsuri to sairei as a matter of historical change. In the matsuri particular respect was shown for the religious purification, abstinence, and ablutions of the participants, and communion with the kami or divine spirits through various ceremonies occupied a central position. In the sairei, on the other hand, the focus of interest shifted to the para-festival activities (for example, contests, parades, and public entertainments) that had once been of peripheral importance, and at the same time a separation between participants and spectators became prominent... Yanagita thought that sairei grew in popularity, especially in towns and cities, from about the fifteenth century.(Inoue 166)

Yanagita suggests that today’s matsuri display the results of previous changes; a change from an original activity of matsuri bound up in notions of purification to that of an eclectic matsuri/sairei activity which incorporates a variety of additional ingredients. As Robertson shows, such revisions in the defining notion of matsuri are, in fact, ongoing. Changes in matsuri to include shimin matsuri (citywide festivals) and other forms of matsuri, with or without the inclusion of a kami will be further accelerated by the the new roles that matsuri play in the process of furosato-zukuri—in the recreation of the traditional Japanese locale.

Matsuri and the national imagination

Robertson (1990) places the recent resurgence of urban matsuri within the context of furusato-zukuri (“native-place-making program”). The latter represents a style of nostalgia-based urban and social design which is pan-Japan in scope (it has central government inputs) and evidenced in a variety of ways in different places (part of its program is the articulation, the re-territorialization, of individual locales). These re-placed native-places become both tourist destinations (see also: Ivy 1988, 33-86 for an analysis of the Japan Railways advertising scheme [“Discover Japan”]; that promoted furusato as tourist destinations) and cultural-revanchist locales for their local residents.

The repertoire of supposedly ancient matsuri practices that Japanese folklorists and Meiji ritualists had described as central to this activity become essential in this quest for legitimacy, even if these had never been locally practiced. The local matsuri is thus disembedded from its original matrix (or, at least from any attempt a recreating this) and reembedded into a grammar of authenticated practices which make all matsuri somewhat identical. This sameness, which should, perhaps, reveal the contrived nature of these events, is instead employed to support its legitimacy as an essentially local and ancient practice. Such matsuri have thus become “simulacra.” They not only bear no resemblance to real (informed by the situated historical model) matsuri, but they achieve a higher level of reality by disregarding the real. The sameness also serves the discourse of nationalism, reinforcing the continuity of national history and practice as they produce new memories of a hegemonic “collective” past.

Furusato-zukuri relies upon the reconstruction of local practices and histories, emblematic among these is the practice of matsuri. “Television stations regularly cover local festivals and broadcast special reports on ‘traditional’ pastimes. For urbanites wishing to enjoy their leisure in a matsuri frame of mind. The Furusato Information Center provides detailed information on regional festivals and ‘traditional’ events accessible to domestic tourists” (Robertson 1991, 38). The use of matsuri in this process reinforces the reflexive demand for “authentic” matsuri activities. The reflexive appropriation of local matsuri practices by the national model reflects another change in the discursive and practical field within which matsuri operates. While Robertson and Ivy touch upon the connection between tourism, nationalism, and matsuri, there is much work to be done in this area.

¹ The three sequences, in Plutschow’s analysis, involve a dialectic between chaos/eros and society/civilization. In the middle, liminal state, chaos has been invited into the village. At the end it is again banished to a remote place. Thus the festival is a commentary on the control of dangerous extra-society forces:

¹ “Japanese and non-Japanese documents suggest that the opening kami-oroshi sequence not only refers to the end of time but to the overthrow of the social order. Therefore the community reacted in noise and confusion, releasing hostilities, reversing social roles, and rousting about with erotic license and orgies. Such sexual license is recorded in the so-called utagaki (poem hedges), poems composed during the festivals dedicated to the deities of Mt. Tsukuba [cf. Manyoshu, 1965, 222]. Even today, violent competition and unruly behavior can be observed in Shinto festivals and injury to the shrine bearers is not uncommon. The ancient Japanese matsuri were certainly more violent than those of today, when the law curbs such behavior our of respect to human health and safety.”(85)

¹ “Nowadays the kami-asobi sequence often takes place at a temporary shrine called tabisho (travel rest), specially erected to entertain the deity. After having toured the community on the shoulders of the shrine-bearers, the deity is finally brought to a temporary rest at tabisho. The tabisho toady may be placed in a sacred reserved area within the human territory or it may be at or near the frontier between cosmos and chaos. As a neutral place, the frontier seems a most appropriate site to enact this sequence of the Shinto festival.”(86)

¹After the series of kami-asobi performances, which have properly appeased the deity, the community prepares to send the deity back to his territory or his shrine.... the deity in the Wakamiya festival makes his ceremonious return to this mountain shrine under the cover of darkness, symbolizing chaos. Dozens of shrine priests tightly surround the shintai (symbol of the deity) carried by the highest-ranking priest. Such kami-okuri (or kami-age) processions end the matsuri sequence and its ritual recreation of the original cosmogony. The Shinto festival having thus been completed, time and order are temporarily restored and the community returns to its orderly daily routines.”(93-94)

²Shinto shrines, and (before Meiji) Buddhist temples, have historically played an important political and social role throughout Japan, as the organization of shrine/temple membership was a ubiquitous means of communication and surveillance in cities and towns. In recent decades this role has been supplanted by organizations such as the chookai.