Bright Lights, Little City

Shinjō Matsuri, a summer festival in Japan’s Yamagata prefecture, transforms an idyllic town into a bustling hub of craftsmanship and culture

- Julian Manning

Laughter rouses me from my curbside stupor. Three young women, wrapped in dazzling yukatas and wearing updo hairstyles that seem to have been sculpted rather than styled, let me know they’re amused by my appearance. With my backwards baseball cap, a camera bag slung over my shoulder, and an entire grilled fish clamped in my mouth—my hands busy tinkering with my DSLR—there’s no way I could look less like a peculiar tourist.

I set down my skewer of ayu, a small river fish prepared with a heavy coating of salt, eaten head, intestines and all, and wash down the embarrassment with a swig of Asahi. Yet my ignominy is short-lived, for what distraction could be better than half-a-million happy parade-goers? The small town of Shinjō, in Tohoku’s (northeastern Japan) Yamagata prefecture, swells from the humble size of 40,000 inhabitants to 5,00,000 from August 24-26, the tail end of Japan’s summer festival season known as matsuri. It is arguably the most popular celebration of the region.

The 20 neighbourhoods that make up the town compete against one another by erecting intricate, colourful floats depicting vignettes from kabuki theatre, a tradition that is over 260 years old. Shinjō’s feudal lord Tozawa Masanobu began this festival centuries ago after a bad harvest, using the festivities to both appease the gods and distract his people. Today, there are no hard times to be seen as thousands of people gorge themselves at concession stands and small children run up and down the streets with ice cream cones in their hands.