The Niihama Taiko Festival is also known as The Men Festival or Otokomatsuri男祭り。The festival happens every year between the 15th and 18th
of October and is dedicated to the local gods thanking them for a good harvest.
Niihama isn’t the only city in Japan that has a taiko festival, but it is one
of the more famous ones and can have 150 thousand spectators visiting the city.
The great sight of the festival is the taiko-dai which means “drum-float”, taiko being drum in Japanese. There are
51 taikodai in Niihama, which
represent the different neighbourhoods in the city, these are then broken down
into 5 districts each holding their own carrying competition.
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| On the street going past Niihama Station |
The taikodai
are 5.4m high, 3.5m wide, supported by four 12m poles at the base and weigh up
to 2.5 tons, they require 150 men to
carry one. (I do bold men as the festival is the ‘men festival’ and the
tradition is that men can only carry the float also one must be strong to lift
and carry the float as they do.) The taikodai
are handmade and can be worth up to $100,000US – which is crazy when you see
what they do with floats. The floats are made of a four-sided wooden centre
frame, which are covered in hand embroidered panels; there are 3 panels per
side. The four sides represent the four cardinal directions. The golden thread
panels have dragons, castles, animals, samurai and other images. The top part
of the column is called the tenmaku
and represents the skies or universe. In here there is a red, blue and white fabric,
which represents the sun. To the corners of the column there are figure eight
black knots called the kukuri and
they represent the clouds, these knots have tassels attached to them
represented the rain, these are called the fusa.
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| The column. Inside is the taiko |
Inside the column is a huge taiko played by one or two men. On the
poles four team members stand control the team with flags, whistles and chants.
They stand there to help with guiding and with motivating the others to lift.
Then up in the top of the column sit four more men. It is a precarious position
to be in as the floats are lifted and moved because they have a tendency to
tip.
Though the festivities last for 3
days I really only went to see one event, this is because the first day events
I was working in Saijo, the second day it poured rain and a speaking to a
friend they said that the events were cancelled. I went on the 18th
to the competition at Ikku Shrine. Here the taiko
teams enter the shrine and then have a lifting competition. What the teams do
is take the float lift it to their shoulder and lift it above their heads. Here
they bounce it trying to hold it aloft the longest. The most impressive was the
orange team that held it up for quite awhile.
This is a video I caught of the lifting in action:
After
viewing the parade the group and I headed into the shrine to see the floats and
also to see if there would be a “fight”. Taikodai
fights have also become a tradition. A
“fight” is two taikodai teams ramming
their floats into one another until one or both are destroyed; the aim is
trying to break the taiko of the
other team. Which seems ridiculous when you think that of the time and cost
that went into making this float. The tradition can also become very dangerous;
there have been deaths and lost limbs due to being caught in between the four
poles as the two floats crash. My friend told me a story about a ‘fight’ in Doi
where a gaijin was part of a team and his team got into a fight, it turned
fatal when the person behind this guy had their head smashed by the poles. This
is the reason that the authorities ask that teams do not fight, but it does
happen. (I didn't see any 'fights' so here's another taikodai picture)
All in all it was a great week to
be in Shikoku. I had a great time during matsuri, even though I did get sicker.
After seeing the two different festivals I did have a little more fun in Saijo
because I felt like I was part of it a little bit more because you are in with
the crowd and really feeling the excitement, where as with the Niihama festival
you are a little more removed from the actual event. My friend Nick made a
great comment saying that the Niihama Taiko Festival is “more a spectacle.”
Which I agree with it’s really something to see.
As always more photos on facebook!!
Comments also are awesome!
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