Gannin Dance Festival: Every spring in Hachirogata Town on May 5th, local men dress up as women to perform unique dances and comical skits. Many of the skits are taken from popular kabuki plays. For the Grinnellians in the audience, this is sort of like Mary B. James meets Cinco de Mayo and open mic night at Bob's.
Komachi Festival: As mentioned in the last post, Akita is famous for its beautiful women. Legend has it that the greatest beauty of all time in Japan, Ono-no Komachi, was born in Ogachi Town here in Akita Prefecture. Ono-no Komachi (born 809CE, during Japan's Heian period) was said to be not only beautiful beyond compare, but also a prodigy in dance, koto (Japanese harp), calligraphy, and waka (Japanese poetry). At age 13 she travelled to Kyoto, the center of Japanese culture and politics in Heian times , where she was much acclaimed for her beauty and talents. Every June Ogachi Town holds a festival in her honor, selecting seven young women from the town to dress up in Heian period clothing and recite seven waka in Ono-no Komachi's honor. The women are chosen specially for their beauty and talents in music and poetry.
Sakura Festivals: Like everywhere in Japan, the spring blooming of the cherry trees is much awaited in Akita, and merits hanami, or special trips with friends to go and view the flowers. Akita is special in that, not only does it have the usual pink and white cherry blossoms, it also has yellow cherry trees, which bloom later.
Hinai Chicken Festival: To honor the famous Hinai chickens raised in Akita, people get drunk and do a ritual chicken dance for this festival.
Ushinori-Kumomai Festival: Held in Katagami and Oga every July 7th, this festival celebrates a legend in which a princess and her husband could only be united one day a year. Rather than focusing on this, though, this festival features a very drunk Japanese man riding a bull that hasn't been fed for a week. Evidently, focusing on the sidenote in the story where a god performs a ritual riding a bull around Tenno is more amusing than a Japanified remake of Persephone's tale.
Kanto Festival: Every August in Akita City, the main street is closed to traffic. After dark, teams of performers hoist large bamboo frames hung with flaming paper lanterns. To the sound of drum, flutes and roaring chants and calls from the audience, they balance the poles on their foreheads, hips, single palms, and pass the poles among their teammates. Sometimes as tall as two stories, and weighing over 150 pounds, these poles are no joke! Between all lampposts and street signs over the sidewalk are strung heavy-duty cables, to prevent wayward bamboo frames from squashing bystanders. This festival is to pray for good fortunes in the upcoming Akita rice harvest at the end of summer.
Omagari Fireworks Festival: Every August in Omagari, the top 30 fireworks makers in Japan compete for supremacy at the National Fireworks Championship. The displays are dazzling.
Oyamabayashi Festival: In Kakunodate (the samurai town) in early September, this festival involves elaborate floats driving around the city streets. The culmination of the festival is what amounts to oversized bumper cars, as the floats ram into each other as hard as possible. Yes this is dangerous.
Namahage Festival: Held each winter in Oga City, the Namahage Festival is a Japanese version of Santa Claus. Only instead of promising goodies as a reward for good behavior, swarms of men in elaborate namahage (demon-like creatures of myth) costumes come down from the mountain, in the dark and snow, and storm into houses and try to drag the terrified children out into the cold. The parents usually let this happen until the namahage are juuust about to leave...then intercede, for the promise of good behavior from their children. They then bribe the namahage with sake to leave their children alone. Thus do Japanese children learn that being bad gets you kidnapped, but you can buy off anyone, even the devil, with sake.
Kamakura Festival: Each winter in Yokote, famous for its copious snowfall, a number of kamakura, or igloo-like snow huts, are built. Some are big enough to hold multiple people; some are tiny, built only to house candles. You can go visiting from hut to hut, being served warm rice wine and sweet cakes by that kamakura's host, usually local children.
Naked Man Festival: Every winter, one man in town is chosen to be the Naked Man. This basically means he becomes a symbolic receptacle for every else's sins. He then strips to his birthday suit (and yes it is cold here in Akita that time of year) and runs through the streets, being chased by the other townsmen wearing nothing but loincloths. If you can catch and touch the Naked Man, you transfer your sins and bad luck to him, and will have a fortunate year. He keeps running until he reaches the shrine, where he undergoes an extensive ritual purification to make sure he doesn't die from all the bad luck donated to him by his entourage of naked neighbors. In some places, women and children stand on the sidelines throwing buckets of icewater or whacking the pursuers with bamboo sticks.
Takeuchi Festival: Basically, this is a drunken brawl with the addition of gigantic bamboo poles and a bonfire. Scores of hammered Japanese men gather in teams around a bonfire, grab a bunch of bamboo poles, and proceed to beat the living **** out of each other in three short, violent rounds. Not much more to say about that one.
There are many, many more local festivals throughout the prefecture, but this is a summary of the more interesting and/or bizarre or famous ones!
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