In a country as outwardly obsessive about safety as Japan, it’s interesting to hear stories of life on the edge. In recent weeks students have described festivals with elements of danger.
One such festival took place a couple weeks ago in Kishiwada-shi, near Osaka. The highlight of the Danjiri Festival is a high-speed “parade” of intricately-carved, incredibly beautiful wooden floats, which are pulled through the streets by dozens of men via long ropes. At intersections, the teams must execute 90 degree turns, while still racing along at high speed. All the while, a man is balancing on top of the float as if riding a surfboard. This is the honored position of daiku-gata. Every year, my students tell me, people are killed during this parade, usually during a crash or when the daiku-gata is flung from the top of the float during a turn. And this year, with two deaths, was no exception.
Closer to Nagano, a festival last Saturday featured almost two hours of low-level fireworks. One student who attended described two hours of rushing from one viewing location to another to escape burning embers falling from the sky. Local fire authorities were on hand to extinguish the many trees that caught on fire. I’m sorry to have missed this one.
Danger, as with so many other things here, is acceptable in the appropriate situation and circumstance.