Traditional "DASHI" Festival in a local city

Hello and Welcome to www.nipponcraft.com,

I visited Tochigi City (栃木市) last weekend and took photos of “DASHI” (山車) festival under the autumn clear sky. I would like to share our unique culture with the world. 

A “DASHI” is a festival cart with three or four wheels. Literally, "DASHI" is "mountain cart" or "mount wheel".  A dashi is similar to a parade float in other countries. People pull a dashi and parade around the town. A dashi is decorated with beautiful fabrics and crafts, and is mounted with dolls and arts. The doll and arts are created based upon historical stories to convey a message of peace, mightiness, etc. So, you need to know the background stories to understand the meaning of the dashi decorations, but I suppose most of the people coming to the festival don’t care about the meanings. They just enjoy!

On the dashi, elder masters and young boys & girls play the Japanese traditional drum and the flute on a small stage in front. The music played is called “Ohayashi”. There is no music note for the ohayashi. An ohayashi sounds just like a simple repeated music. When people hear ohayashi music, they will know straight away that a festival is going on somewhere in the town.

In the photo, you will see a funny man dancing at the head of the parade. He is wearing "Hyottoko" mask, and his job is close to that of a clown. 

The Tochigi Autumn Dashi Festival is held every other year and this year it was held on November 10 and 11. The festival dates back in 1874. One of the wealthy merchants in the town bought a dashi and started to march as an attention-seeking way aside a shrine festival.

Tochigi City is located approx. 90km north of Tokyo. In the city, there is a historical road where an imperial messenger once walked from Kyoto to Nikko Toshogu Shrine where Tokugawa Ieyasu is buried. Tokugawa Ieyasu was the first samurai who established the Edo-era that last for 260 years. There are several old houses beside the road preserved as they were in the era.

I hope you will enjoy the photos. 

Thank you for visiting our blog!

Uchiwa fan added

Hello and Welcome to www.nipponcraft.com,

I didn't update the blog for a while. I was hesitating to advertise products outside our website. This is because our stock of each item is very small (often one or two) and I though that the visitors to our blog might have little chance to shop the items that I introduced here.  In the past, a customer sent us an inquiry for purchasing the item through this blog, but unfortunately it was already sold out and we could not restock the same item because it was one-of-a-kind handmade piece.

But I changed my mind - I decided to write the blog just for introducing the traditional crafts rather than inducing shopping on our website.

So, we have added new "Uchiwa" flat fans on our website :  https://www.nipponcraft.com/index_en_jpy_10.html
but as always we only have one stock for each.

These fans are handmade with the traditional craftsmanship succeeded from Edo period in the mid-1600's. The craftsmen boast the long history. I feel that the fans convey the antique, simple and frugal mood of the Edo period.

I happened to encounter with these traditional style fans when I traveled to Tateyama City in Chiba Prefecture.

The region around Tateyama City is also known as "Bou-Shu" (房州) or the state of "Bou". "Bou" （房）is the shortened name of the state around in the Edo period. The official state name was "安房国" (which reads "Awa-No-Kuni"),  and the kanji in the center was taken for the nickname.

So, the craftsmen call their products "Bou-Shu" Uchiwa.

The region has become a hub of Uchiwa production, with utilizing region’s native bamboos that have nice pliability for fan frames.

Here are the pictures of "Bou-shu Uchiwa" fans. These fans look simple but lots of care are taken for production.

Thank you for visiting our blog!