Taimatsu Akashi - Burn baby burn! (image intensive)

The town I'm in is famous for holding on of Japan's 3 great fire festivals, the 松明あかし (Taimatsu Akashi), held in the second week of November. I mentioned in a previous post that it commemorates an event that happened in the Warring States period, when the daimyo from Sendai, Date Masamune, tried to annex Sukagawa. The people of the town apparently didn't want to be ruled by some one-eyed punk from the north, and so built massive stacks of bamboo and straw (called taimatsu) and set them on fire around the town the keep the little shrimp out. It worked, surprisingly, because Date actually gave up on attacking and went elsewhere.

(I should probably mention that my image of Date Masamune is heavily influenced by a certain video game series produced by Koei, and should in no way be construed as an accurate portrayal of a particularly gutsy, if somewhat smallpox ridden, feudal lord from ancient Japan.)

In modern times, the town is quite proud (and justifiably so) of maintaining its liberty, and so every year, the folks here recreate that night by building 10 metre tall columns of bamboo filled with combustibles, carrying them to the Midorigaoka park and setting them on fire. There's a lot of skill involved in making them, and the local masters drop by interested parties such as schools and citizen groups to impart some specialist knowledge handed down from the old days.

Here's a schematic of how the bamboo poles are strapped together to for the basic structure of the taimatsu:

Looks simple, but the size of the actual thing makes it really difficult to build.

And here are the kids at one of my junior high schools weaving together strips of bamboo to make the 1.5 metre diameter rings that hold the poles together:


The whole thing is stuffed with straw then wrapped in sheets of woven grass to keep it all together. Of course there's then the logistics of carrying it to the park. Most groups ship their taimatsu up to the park (located on a hill) on the back of a truck in the days before the festival, but the schools have to do it the old fashioned way, perhaps as a character building exercise, or maybe just to save on the truck rental. It's a well orchestrated manoeuver, involving rotating teams of about 60 people supporting strategically placed struts under the taimatsu, which weighs about 2 tonnes on a good day. I was told that it rained the year before on the day the school transported theirs to the park, adding an extra tonne of rainwater to the backs of their strapping young'uns. Character building, maybe. Chronic injury, more like it.

Burning haystacks isn't the only thing that happens on the day however. The townspeople also re-enact the deployment of their people in defense of the city. Basically, groups of townspeople dress up in samurai gear (complete with replica weapons, feudal period flags and the odd horse) and walk from the main street to the park where the taimatsu are. Even kids get in on the act, with representatives from the local elementary schools dressing up as miniature warriors. Real cute.

I'm never one to pass up a cosplay opportunity, so this year I elected to walk in the parade instead of helping to carry the city hall's taimatsu (duh). I was put into the archers' contingent together with a group of trainee nurses from the Fukushima Hospital, which is located just minutes from my place by car. Here are a few pics of us as well as the other samurai, including this year's winner of the local beauty pageant dressed as the town princess at the time.


Ain't we cool? ^^ btw, I'm second from the right.



I wish I had been able to take pictures of the kids, but by the time the parade started it had begun to rain, and we were all told to put on raincoats to protect our costumes and stave off the cold, so there was no point. Hey, the samurai of yore didn't wear no stinking raincoats! They were hardcore!

I was told later by a friend that it usually rains during the festival, and it would be extremely lucky if it didn't. So I've decided that I'll stay here until such time I can get to see a Taimatsu Akashi that's actually dry for a change. Nyah.

Anyway, the highlight of the festival happened after the parade: the lighting of the taimatsu. In these times of modern organic chemistry, the folks here use an accelerant on the tops of the taimatsu to make sure they start burning quickly. In a triumph of science over nature, all the taimatsu were alight within half an hour. It was nice to get near them while they burned, partly because it's truly a sight to behold, but mostly because it gets really cold after sundown this time of year.


It's a pyromaniac's dream I tells ya. CLAIR must have somehow twigged that I like burny things when I applied. ^^

And finally, I wouldn't have snapped this pic had someone standing beside me not mentioned that one of the haystacks looked a lot like a flaming... uh...

Looks suss, doesn't it? Doesn't it?!!