This past weekend I had the honor of attending Tokyo’s largest Shinto festival, the Asakusa Sanja Festival, which honors three men (now kami or Shinto gods) who are credited with beginning Senso-ji, the main temple of Asakusa, presently an important cultural heritage site and huge tourist magnet. For the festival, always held in late May, the streets surrounding the temple complex are shut down and people flood the streets, celebrating with music, food and general merrymaking. Think of a carnival, Shinto-style. But it’s Japan, so way cleaner and way safer. (Though the Asakusa Sanja Festival is arguably the only time the yakuza or Japanese mafia come to a proud forefront of Japanese society. I’m still trying to figure that one out.)
In order to get across my day at the festival to you, the reader, I’ll start with a few pictures and try to relate my experience in first hand terms. Imagine exiting the Asakusa Station, just barely making the pre-set meeting time with your friends, only to find this sight waiting for you:
See, the festival title “sanja” literally translates into “three shrines,” which indicates the portable shrines being carried through the masses in these pictures. As you can probably surmise, they’re kind of heavy. But it’s an honor to carry them, so neighborhoods team up in their respective colors and shoulder the mikoshi (portable shrines), shouting cheers all the way, shaking the shrine as much as possible as this is thought to give the kami riding in it more power.
While the festival is great, you and your friends can’t seem to get anywhere. You’re stuck in between camera-toting pensioners and beer-toting pensioners, not to mention trying to to be stepped on by ones carrying both of the aforementioned objects. You try to get out of the way of one massive mikoshi only to be faced with death by a musical float. That’s right. A float. Full of musicians.
You sneak away from that, only to turn a corner and run into a bunch of overly-cute kids leading their own float. (You are subsequently given dirty looks for endangering children with your massive foreign feet.)
But the kids are too cute to be annoyed at, so you back away slowly, cooing all the while, only to be stopped when there’s an impromptu taiko group performance. Seriously, they were probably ninjas – they were there, did a song and then were gone in under 6 minutes.
Finally, you make it into the main street leading up to Senso-ji, following the masses and a few neighborhood groups wielding their mikoshi to the main shrine. Every now and again a big scary old guy pops up and yells at you to get out of the way of the mikoshi . While you cower in fear, the thought of all the bubble tea and italian ice that awaits you in the temple complex spurs you on.
And then finally, after eating way to much sugar in one hour and possibly something that wasn’t candy at all, you and your friends, exhausted by all the festivities, decide to head home. Attempting to circumvent all the mikoshi madness, you scurry off down a side street and into one of the various roofed open-air markets of Japan only to find…yet another mikoshi. Will you never be free?
Despite all the close calls with being crushed by gilded-kami-thrones, the festival was really great. It’s one of these times where Japanese culture has been consolidated into a very condensed time and place, so much so that any foreigner who didn’t know about Shinto or the community factor or even the Japanese love for shouting out random things in public would be at a complete loss. Or perhaps feel the need to back away slowly. Not to mention the accepted festival garb of Japanese men is…unique to say the least.
Now that’s real faith.
