The Art of the Summer Matsuri

Japanese people love festivals. If you wanted to, you could plan an entire trip to Japan based on attending local festivals every weekend. They hold them for pretty much every conceivable event, particularly natural events. The far north probably takes the prize for some of the strangest cold-weather traditions, mostly involving freezing temperatures and nowhere near enough clothing (sometimes, no clothing at all).

Summer matsuri are slightly different. Very little is required of the participant: mostly the festivals exist as an excuse for getting out of doors (the Japanese are not big on picnics and such) and eating festival food. Basically every city, town, and village in the country has its own summer matsuri -- even if it consists only of a stage with local musicians performing, and a few stalls selling fried food.

Sendai’s biggest festival is the Tanabata Festival in early August. Most cities in Japan celebrate the event, but Sendai’s version is probably the most famous.

Tanabata Festivals celebrate the alignment of a certain set of stars, mythically a pair of lovers separated by the Milky Way for almost the entire year. The story goes that many years ago, Orihime, the daughter of the King of the Universe, wove beautiful cloth for her father. However, she was sad that she worked too hard to ever be able to meet eligible bachelors. So her father arranged for her to meet and marry Kengyu, a cow herder. They fell in love, and in their… distraction, forgot either to weave or to herd the cows. The King of the Universe became annoyed by the lack of cloth and the cows running amok, and put them on opposite sides of the Milky Way. They were so sad, however, that he eventually relented and now allows them to meet for one day per year.

Given that the festival celebrates the actual, observable movement of stars, you’d think the date would be fixed -- but apparently the differences between the lunisolar calendar and the Gregorian calendar mean that some places celebrate in early July and others in early August. So says wikipedia.

Sendai falls into the August camp. For three days in early August, the city is crowded to brimming with tourists from all over Japan, who come to see the fireworks, the parade, and the literally thousands of paper streamer decorations.

Why we celebrate a practically-doomed love affair with crepe paper decorations is beyond me. But they are really very beautiful, and since it brings good fortune to make one, pretty much every business in downtown Sendai (especially along the two main shopping arcades, where the majority of people go for their paper-decoration-viewing) hangs one outside their doors. Many double as advertisements, which can lead to some of the funniest and most interesting versions:

I wonder what the king of the universe would have to say.