Hitachi Furyumono and the Festival

Hitachi Furyumono and the Festival
On the 3rd, 4th, and 5th of May, four floats of ‘Hitachi Furyumono’ (designated important tangible and/or intangible cultural property of Japan) were open to the public at Daioin dori (street) in Hitachi. The origin of Furyumono goes back to 1695 when floats were dedicated to Kamine Shinto Shrine during religious festivals. In Shintoism, festivals mean that deities and people communicate through certain rites on specific dates. In any region in Japan, where there is a shrine, there are usually festivals being held. On the 4th of May, a God climbed down Mt. Kamine from the inner shrine near the top of Mt. Kamine and progressed around the precinct of the shrine with Shinto priests, children and many parishioners. At several important places, they performed ritual ceremonies. There, children perform the Sasara dance, playing the part of lions and bears, who are thought to be brave heralds for God. In the past, the Furyumono floats were also in parades. They must have been magnificent spectacles. However, in recent years, due to traffic problems and other reasons, the floats are no longer part of these parades.
“Chigo（Child)”parade	Sasara
Furyumono is a puppet show operated by steel wires, performed onstage on the float. They say that it was devised in the early 18th century imitating ningyo joruri (a puppet theater with chanted narration) which was very popular at that time in Tokyo and Osaka area. The floats are 2.1meters wide and 6.6meters long. On the floats are stages for the shows, with settings of 15 meter high mountains. The sound of clappers signals the opening of the show, then drums, flutes, and sho (a kind of metallic percussion instrument) begin to play cheerful and lively music. Five-storied stages are open across to about 7 meters wide one after another. On every stage, puppets play a favorite scene respectively and five scenes remind us of one story. A samurai (warrior) is brandishing his sword on the horse back, a young page shooting an arrow, a man rowing a boat. How do the manipulators pull the wires in the narrow space under the stage for the puppets’ complicated movement? Suddenly the puppets change into other roles by tumbling down in an instant. It creates a stir amongst the audience. While they are staring at the girl puppets dancing with parasols or flowers, the stage itself turns around slowly to the back stage, which is quite different from the front.
People in the four towns in the precinct of Kamine Shinto Shrine have been vying for superiority of their puppet show and making it more and more refined and elegant. (“Furyumono” means something refined or elaborately designed.) For more than 300 years, town people have been repeating the same process, talking over the title of the next performance, making kashira(heads of puppets), sewing kimonos for the puppets, practicing narimono (the music), besides their daily work. Most floats and kashira were lost in the war disasters in 1945, but the eagerness of the people restored Furyumono again in 1958. Furyumono receives wonderful words of praise not only during festivals, but also when it’s open to public on various events. It is regrettable however, in 1992, the town people decided to practice the great festival, the procession and the performance of Furyumono with all four floats after a gap of every seven years. Surely children are able to enrich their minds abundantly through the precious experiences of these festivals such as playing the most important roles in the ritual ceremony looked after by elders, drawing heavy and unstable floats with many comrades, and seeing the splendid tradition of their home town.