LOCAL POWER

Local festival time at Akanoi shrine in a small ricefield village across the lake, few outsiders, I'm probably the most outsider here... everyone waiting for the procession either comes to the shrine that is the destination or sits on the narrow streetside verandas where they will watch the procession pass by with its rocking omikoshi and dangerous naginata spear dancing, which starts at another distant shrine and wends its way here through the old narrow neighborhood streets of two-horse width.

While waiting we enter the small local supermarket, which in its own way is especially interesting to us. It offers items never seen in the big city or suburban markets, not even in the broadly rural areas like where we live. There are dozens of varieties of fish in dozens of raw and prepared forms, many other foodthings I've never seen before, it's like stepping into the distant past: types of rice and bean sweets that Tokugawa likely enjoyed as a boy.

We wait then for a while at the shrine, where someone is idly practicing on the big drum, evoking the Seven Samurai theme... The elder folks huddle together to talk of family matters, farming, prices, politics and elderly health, while the young folks go off to the gaudy carnival area, bright even at noon, to play and win prizes, get even more excited-- a little boy comes along with a big bag of cotton candy (they sell it in bags here, not on paper cones as in the US)-- a little girl wrestles hungrily with three sticky rice-paste dango on a short wood skewer-- various local officials arrive in suits and ties-- the pace of these farming village festivals is slow, like hand-tilling a rice field...

Then the procession nears-- we can hear the chants and music-- we go and find a strategic vantage-- and slowly along come the young men in the parade, dressed in only fundoshi as they labor over kilometers to carry and bounce the heavy omikoshi on their shoulders, get to show off their muscular prowess to the young women who stand in the doorways and sit on the verandas that line the way...

Following come the children and the tots, the little ones guided by fathers and mothers but performing on their own, all dressed in traditional finery, twirling their swords and spears in time to the rhythm of the drums and gongs and chanting, over kilometers, slow step by slow step in the hot sun, an immense task for one who just wants to run and play but they stick to it, out of deep respect they hold to their assigned task, concentrating, learning intense discipline with everyone watching along the way full of praise, and the little girls dressed in rainbows of beauty with big flowered hats, dancing and playing percussion in time as they too move very slowly along together but alone, whirling and slow-stepping their way down the street in close-up for the happy eyes of all the proud grandmas that lean forward to see and smile...

It is spiritfood to see what can be done, what is still being done where few from outside come to see, to see the strength of a culture made visible in its youth, precisely where elsewhere in the world it is being lost...