Only One Wakamono Objected

Under the law, a hikiyama (the large wooden float that is pulled through the streets) counts as a special vehicle. So before Kakunodate no Omatsuri (the festival of Kakunodate) begins, a schedule has to be handed to the police in advance: which streets, on which day, at what hour. Write it down, submit it. Today nobody questions this.

But there was a time when it was not taken for granted at all.

Kakunodate no Omatsuri has no fixed timetable for the three days and no fixed route. When two floats meet in a street, the two sides hold a kosho (a negotiation over which float passes first). If they cannot agree, the argument can stand there for an hour, or for two. If it breaks down, the floats are driven into each other in what is called yama-buttsuke, and there is no time limit on that either. It goes on until one side gives way, or until both sides are satisfied.

In other words, nobody knows when it will end. And we were being asked to write down in advance a thing that cannot be known in advance. The strain was obvious from the start.

So how did it come to that? As I remember it, the collisions simply went on and on, year after year, until the police finally lost patience and put the question of time on the table. My memory here is hazy and I may have the details wrong. But I remember the mood.

One thing here is hard to follow from outside. In Kakunodate, floats are not fielded only by the chonai (the neighborhood districts) or by street units. There are also floats fielded by a wakamono (literally "the young men").

Take the wakamono I belonged to. Three districts stand behind it, and from within those three, the young people who want to take part in the festival come together and run a single float. The districts do not order anyone to do it. It is the wakamono side that goes round the three districts collecting donations, and it is that money the float runs on.

So the three districts cooperate with the wakamono float, but they hold no authority over it at all. They do not tell it what to do. It really is a float run by those who want to be there.

And then it became an uproar. It was in the local papers and on television.

I was around high school age at the time, so I do not know the details. But there is one thing I remember clearly. It was not that everyone objected from the beginning. The one that objected was a single wakamono. And it was the wakamono of the very area where the police station stood at the time. That is why it became such a big story.

I thought they were right, too. I did not think a police station had any business managing the hours of our festival.

The police, however, did not move. Submit no schedule, take no part in the festival. They held that line without budging.

Today I understand why. Seen from inside, this is a strict festival that has been carried for generations, and neither the town office nor the police have any standing to comment on it. That feeling is real. But seen from outside, people are drinking while floats are driven into each other, and unless somebody stops it, it never ends. The streets stay closed. It does look abnormal, it is a nuisance, and it is wearying. To say that it had gone too far is not off the mark at all.

Whether it was the executive committee or a meeting of the leaders, I do not know. But I have heard that the talks went on at length. And the only one still objecting at the end was that single wakamono.

What their leader finally said was, as I remember it, something to this effect:

"I have no right to take away the enjoyment of the young men who take part, so I submitted it."

Those "young men" means the float I belonged to. If he had pushed his own position through, we might have lost our place in the festival. So he stepped back and chose the form in which we could still take part.

At the time I was genuinely proud of the older generation. They said what they wanted to say, out loud. And when it could not be done, they stepped back for the sake of what came next. It is because they were that kind of people, I think, that the festival ran hot.

But the story does not end there.

Those same people used to complain about the meetings. Executive committee or leaders' meeting, whatever the name, what actually happened there was "almost nothing but handing things over". Read out what was decided last year, pass it on unchanged. If that is all, there is no point in holding a meeting at all, they said.

I think that is the debt we are paying now. If the things that needed saying had been said to the end back then, and the things that needed deciding had been decided, we could have held more of the running and the safety in our own shape. Year after year of nothing but handing things over, and the reasons behind the rules grow blurred. And the people inside do not notice that they have grown blurred.

In later years someone lost his life at the festival. A safety committee was set up, and the control of time and the reporting requirements became far stricter than before. It is natural for rules that protect people to increase. But whether we accept those rules because we were told to from outside, or put them in place because we thought them through ourselves, makes all the difference.

Keep a rule because we were told to. Do it this year because it was done that way last year. Carry on like that and the rules will be there in number, but no one will be able to say why. Put harshly: it is a festival that is beautiful on the surface and empty inside.

Until I stopped taking part, I would sometimes remember this episode and say:

"Konna mon ne ba hya, motto omoshire no ni." (If we did not have this thing, it would be a lot more fun. Akita dialect.)

Now I think something slightly different. Not that it would have been more fun without it, but that we should have talked it through properly at the time.

This story cannot be found on the internet. I wrote it from memory alone, so some of it is surely wrong. Even so, I believe six or seven parts out of ten come through accurately.

Nobody talks about it, and nobody writes about it. So I wrote it.

(Incidentally, the leader who objected at the time later published a book setting out his own views. Anyone who looks will find it.)