The Japanese are world renowned for their reserved, cheerful, polite nature. But if you ever did want to see one kick a policeman in the head, or set their friends on fire, I would recommend the Nagasaki Obon Matsuri.
In most parts of Japan in late August, respectful memorials to the dead are visited by those who have lost a loved one during the year, these are Obon Matsuri, festivals for the recently departed. A small floating vessel is lit with candles and reverentially floated out on a river toward the sea. Quite families calmly remember a great-aunt as a beautiful sea of spirits floats away from them.
Nagasaki, however, is a city that likes to take things a little further.
No. A lot further.
When Portuguese Catholics occupied Nagasaki in the 1600s, they proselytised furiously and successfully, converting the local lord and staking claim to the prefecture. The reaction of the shogunate was to not only send an army to drive the westerners out, but to boil, actually boil, anyone who followed their obscene faith.
So, to avoid getting boiled, the Nagasaki-ites exaggerated their Japaneseness. Every village festival with remote shinto connections became a vast overblown ordeal, if northern Japanese had paper boats, Nagasaki would have giant, multi section, TV laden, wooden barges.
If everywhere else was going to make do with candles, these oh-so-not-Christian Nagasaki people were going to honour their dead times a million by blowing up powerful explosives supplied by their other foreign friends the Chinese.
You know those fire crackers that come in strips of ten, you light one end of the strip and drop it before it starts making noise? Well those strips come in boxes of a hundred or so… and those boxes come in crates… of thousands.
The more noise you make, the more dedication you show. And this is where the affair stops being so light hearted. Families with kids, who lost grandma this year, go early in the day, let off a few fire crackers and parade through town. It’s an act of dedication which holds an extended family together and helps create a feeling of having done the right thing by grandma, she’d be proud.
But after dark things get serious. Some of these are simply bigger families, or richer ones, the floats are more ostentatious and they have more in the way of fire power. But among them are people still in serious mourning, perhaps for someone who was a pillar of the community, or someone who died young.
For the young, this is not a light hearted memorial, this is an explosive catharsis. Drunk teenagers show a violent rejection of death and pour out their grief by going absolutely crazy. And the tourist crowds stand back, half out of respect for a very genuine and tragic display of emotion, half out of fear of physical harm.
That’s what happens when you throw a match into a crate of fire crackers. A man did get set on fire by that last one, he rolled around till he was put out and then carried on marching.
But the police were not happy. One year in Japan and I’d never seen a policeman do anything more than give directions, tonight they had to protect these people from themselves. They had armoured vans to take away arrestees, and were riling up drunk angry kids by knocking the boxes of fireworks from their hands.
In the bottom right of the above photo you can see some high-schoolers riding around on a wagon waving fireworks. That’s a wagon full of fireworks by the way.
The police stepped in, but in the dark and the blur I managed very few good pictures. Punches were thrown, kids who were politely serving behind the counter in Family Mart that morning were dragged away crying and screaming. And people ask me why I love Nagasaki…
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