Hana-Mi (花見）

Hana Mi (literally, 'flower viewing') is one of the great cultural traditions of Japan.

Around the end of March, the Cherry trees burst into full bloom. They start in the far south, and move up Japan in a wave of flowers over the following week. So great is the custom of viewing the flowers, the Japanese weather agency publishes official forecasts of the specific blooming dates for each region. When the forecasters realised their prediction was out by a couple of days, they had to go on national TV and make a full apology, bowing and scraping in the way that only the Japanese can.

Sakura, the Japanese Cherry Blossom, is repeatedly fêted throughout Japanese culture, from the most austere of Haiku to the cheesiest of J-pop lyrics.

When those flowers finally emerged, it became perfectly clear what all the fuss is about.

The bloom is radiant and lovely, to a gratuitous degree.

WHY be that pretty?

Well, reason or no, the effect is wonderful, and manna to the soul.


The Japanese being one of the most civilised of peoples, they take the time to sit and watch the flowers, in viewing sessions known as Hana Mi. They have a long history; The Tale of Genji, written in the early eleventh Century, tells of flower viewing sessions much akin to Hana Mi.

Despite the traditions of Zen austerity that remain as one strand of Japanese culture, they are also extraordinarily good at enjoying the pleasures of life.

They do not just sit and watch in silence, in raptures of aesthetic wonder.

Instead, they get pissed.

Large groups, whether of friends, work colleagues, communities, sit on spread blue tarpaulins, and drink themselves into a flower covered alcoholic oblivion.

Keen to sample as much of Japanese culture as possible, we were keen to emulate our hosts example.

This was made easier by my discovery of a new, special can size of Asahi Beer.



A can of beer, bigger than an adult's head. God bless the Japanese.

At night, the parks of dense Cherry Blossom are floodlit and packed with revellers. Viewing cherry blossom at night is called 夜桜 (Yozakura); when a culture produces a single word to describe something, it shows that thing is important to those people (You may notice we don't have a single word for 'watching cherry blossom at night' in English.)

[Incidentally, my favourite untranslatable word is 'Uitwaaien' - Dutch for 'to walk in the wind for fun'.]

The week after our own Hana Mi, I was in Kyoto and found this beauty, its boughs heavily laden with blossom, standing strong and still, drawing all eyes to its treasures.
Sakura is not just famous because of its great beauty. It also holds a great emotional draw because of its fleeting lifespan. For a week, the blossoms grow. Then they stand, proud and brilliant in full bloom, for one week more. And after that, it is all downhill.
The blossom flies off in the wind. The ground becomes ankle deep in drifts of discarded cherry blossom.

A couple of weeks, and then it is all gone. Plain green leaves replace the bright blossom. The blossom on the floor shrivels to yellow dust.

In Japanese culture, the blossom is seen as the ultimate example of 物の哀れ ('Mono no aware'). Various translations exist, but it roughly means 'the pathos of the fleeting nature of existence'.

One week it is bright and brilliant, the next week it is gone.

It is a powerful reminder of the brevity of our time here.

So in the mean time, let's have a drink.

Koen Debut - 公園デッビュー

*If you don't know what Butoh is, read this previous post first*

Koen Debut (公園デッビュー) is a Japanese phrase that refers to the first time that a new-born baby is paraded in the local park (koen). Its meaning has broadened to refer to any first-time presentation or debut, but it still keeps the element of the naive baby, not quite sure what is going on - an element that seems appropriate for my koen debut...

I knew a month or so in advance that my Butoh Koen Debut would be in February. We perform once or twice at every practice in front of other members of the group, but this would be the first time I would dance in front of a real audience.

But my actual first time came a week early.

A local bar, a centre for the Fukuoka art scene, was hosting an exhibition of paintings by a local artist. They were large figures of cut board, all crazed hair and technicolour flamboyance, very girly but full of energy. Liking the pieces, we offered to do a performance in the space, and I was volunteered to take part. My understanding of Japanese being at best partial, I just nodded and said 'of course', not entirely sure what I was letting myself in for.

I turned up on the Friday night, and was quickly pinned down by the artist and her make-up friend, who proceeded to paint my eyelids silver and dust me with stars. I got an ivy headband (weirdly reminiscent of a crown of thorns), and bunches of plastic grapes hung from my belt.

Butoh is usually improvised, which makes for unpredictable (and often exciting) performances. Unfortunately, the preparation also has a tendency to be somewhat improvised, which is rather more problematic. As I had brought my laptop, bulging with mp3s, my teacher asked me to put together some music for the performance - twenty minutes before it was due to start. Not the best pre-performance preparation.

Myself and three girls, decked out to the nines, danced solo in turn, before coming together at the end. While the others performed, we stood as statues, flat to the world like one of the paintings. Dancing last of the three, I stood there for half an hour, focussed on the back wall. When I moved and begun to dance, at last I managed to see the crowd - 30 faces, staring up at me from bodies hunched on the floor, watching my every move. The first time I've performed since I was about 9, this was definitely one of those 'how did I get here moments'. The end of the dance saw me dance with Maiko, a Japanese dancer bedecked with flowers. Stuck for ideas, I resorted to crass plagiarism, stealing an idea from a dance performance my father made a long time ago, in which he offered a woman a flower, which she took from him, and devoured whole. - Dad, apologies m(^-^)m

Here, I stole Maiko's flower from her head, and ate it cruelly. She pushed her fingers between my teeth, and took the sodden, half-chewed plastic flower from my jaws. She put it in her own mouth, chewed sourly, and spat it out violently into the audience.

The piece was supposed to end with the three girls surrounding me to form a final tableau. But this being improvised, Maiko preferred to walk straight out into the crowd to her new boyfriend, watching her dance for the first time, and seemingly not best pleased at the random English boy stealing his girl's flower.

I dare say we looked pretty good, much helped by the vibrant pictures. However, somewhat predictably, the tech side was a bit of a mare. More than a mare; actually disastrous. That side is best forgotten - it just makes me feel queasy...

The week after, a second performance, this time in my teacher's house, deep in the countryside in a rickety fishing village called Nakashima.

Wooden houses, mouldering fishing nets, gumbooted men smoking by the docks. It's a wonderful old place, though the whole lot will be demolished en masse to build a highway.

My teacher's house has a side building with a large performance space upstairs. With one whole wall of windows, it is light and airy, and has slick wooden and tatami floors. Two women, one Australian and one French, live in the building and study with Harada-san. Drop toilets and no central heating make for a basic lifestyle, but one with a suitably wabi/sabi aesthetic.











The performance space is walled on three sides, and backed by large window, over which is hung reams of thick white crepe paper that glows in the sun and billows in the breeze.

On the day of the performance, the house was full and busy from the morning. But the preparations were not physical or mental, culinary. Dish after dish was rustled up - pasta, stew, rice, oden, meat, fish - a veritable banquet.

As this performance would be entirely improvised, and each member of the group would be performing solo, there was nothing in the way of rehearsal to be done. An order was decided, music collated, lighting requested, and then back to the kitchen.

I was on third, and danced to two pieces by the Kronos Quartet - whirling, wild violin pieces; raw, modern, but finely crafted.

I'd had a lot of back pain, and had noticed a few weeks previous that my right shoulder is higher than my left (the legacy of an unnecessarily dramatic bike accident on my last day in Oxford, and when I fell in the Takachiho Gorge - not so funny now...)

Going for a 'can't beat them, join them' idea, I decided to make the most of how my body felt - hence the lopsided outfit, pulling my body further out of position.

I stood there, on the same stage where we practise a few times a month. It's a low ceiling, a small space, not designed for a body as long as mine; fortunately, it means I can't not fill the stage, which is all for the good.










All the other members of the group performed in turn, though I only have photos of a couple:

Ikumi















Shin-san, with her recently born sprog - the youngest dancer of the evening (I was the second youngest).

She brings her little baby to practice every Sunday, and he has a fine pair of lungs on him. Left to his own devices for more than a minute, he will bawl to the rooftops for his mummy. She either dances with him, or suckles him comatose before she can dance in peace.



Maiko, who I danced with the week before.

With a white dress and white face, she could easily have passed for a ghost. She has a very unusual character, normally sweet and kind, but when she dances she becomes something else - wild, intense, broken.

She carried a pair of white feathered wings in her hands, and took three minutes to walk from the edge to the centre of the stage, her faces knotted in total concentration. When she ran out of time and the music stopped, she pounded around the stage, repeating "mada, mada" ['not yet, not yet'].

With the performances over, the party began. The feast was a wonder to behold, and even better to eat. The beer and sake flowed, and the real dancing began. If I learnt anything that night, it was that dancers make good parties. Party Butoh is quite a different affair, closer to burlesque than what had come before.

What is it that the rugby boys say?

'What goes on on tour, stays on tour.'


N.B. Thanks to Brendan for the photos.

Karatsu Kunchi

362 days a year, Karatsu is an unexceptional fishing town. It is next to a beautiful pine forest (with a big road through the middle of it), and a lovely beach (facing an industrial plant), and has a large C17th castle (built in 1966). But for the three days of the Karatsu Kunchi, the town shakes off the dust, swaps its work clothes for ceremonial garb, and holds its head up high.













Fourteen floats, each three stories high and several tonnes in weight, are dragged in grand style through the town by hundreds of people. The floats are between 150 and 200 years old, but remain immaculately decorated and in pristine condition.









Given that they are clearly such treasures, it is heartening to see two men perched atop every float, urging the straining crowds onto greater efforts. The two men on top throw a repetitive chant back and forth with each tug of the rope:

"Aye-yar aye-yar aye-yar aye! Aye-yar aye-yar aye-yar aye! Aye-yar aye-yar aye-yar aye!"

They keep that up for three days, waving sticks and lanterns above their heads, trying to keep up the energy of the group. Even at a standstill, they maintain the chant; a matter of pride to be seen to be having more fun than the other groups. For three days, the Sake flows, and the voices grow hoarse, but the shouting doesn't stop.







These are no mere museum exhibits; these are living parts of the town, at once both symbol and participant in the life of the place. Each float represents a different part of town, and is pulled only by people from that area.









Every group wears a distinct, vividly coloured outfit. They range in age from the toddlers placed in the float and kids who lead the procession, through the burly men who manhandle it around the corners, right up to the greying old geezers who follow behind, grumbling about turning circles.









It is essentially quite a simple festival (after all, they are only pushing carts around). But they make sure they squeeze every last drop of interest out of it; pulled at night, pulled during the day; pulled through sand; pulled as fast as possible.

















This is no tourist event; it's a festival with a future. All ages take part, and those kids will be in charge of the floats in decades to come. Its strength comes from the competitive pride it creates between people from different parts of the town, striving to better each other.



Just as with the correfoc and castellers of Barcelona, petty local rivalries are transformed into a positive creative force. No one could create a festival like this from scratch, top down; it needed to grow from its roots to become strong.