Niall Goes to Watch Dancing in Tokushima

Awa Odori – a dance festival in Tokushima city, Japan.



I went to watch some dancing in Tokushima city one evening in August. To be clear, this isn’t the Soul Train line dance and it sure as flip isn’t Michael Flatley wearing the massive silk shirt tucked into the black slacks and tappa-tappa-tapping. This is Awa Odori and it’s incredible.

A note on the name of the festival and the old Japanese provinces

The island which I've been dispatched to for my teaching job is called Shikoku. Shikoku means four provinces, but I think I’ve seen it translated as four countries too. Modern day Shikoku is made up of prefectures the four: Ehime prefecture, Kochi prefecture, Tokushima prefecture and my current home, Kagawa prefecture. Kagawa’s old name is Sanuki and Tokushima’s old name is Awa.

I presumed that the old provinces were smaller subdivisions than Japan’s present day prefectures. This is because a fellow student in Kanazawa explained to me years ago that Ishikawa prefecture was created by merging two old provinces, Kaga and Noto. But no! This is not the case in Shikoku, at least, where nineteen-o-splash’s four countries or four provinces with the frozen feet on the cold floorboards and the ox-drawn plows are two-thousand-and-splash’s prefectures with the camera phones and the 3-D graphics. I delve into this ancient provincialism because I like Japanese place names (a lot!!) and because it all just kind of spilled out of my brain as I typed. The prefecture system replaced the old provinces in the 1870s.


One notable thing about Japan’s regions is that the old names for places still endure and endear in the local traditions and language. Here in Kagawa, the local (and unfortunately incomprehensible) dialect is called Sanuki-ben. The famous thick wheat noodles are called Sanuki udon. And so on. In much the same way as ancient Tokyo is evoked by the word Edo and ancient Kanazawa is evoked by the word Kaga. I saw Kaga written all over the place in downtown Kanazawa in 2007. Sanuki, to me at least, means Ye Olde Kagawa. I’m struggling to find equivalents in the Irish context, but would it be like calling New York New Amsterdam or something? Wait, imagine calling Dun Laoghaire Kingstown. No, that’s not a good one either. Suggestions welcome.

Awa became Tokushima many years ago, but the massive dance festival that takes place in Tokushima city keeps the name and is proud of its ancient tradition, hundreds of years old. The airport in Tokushima is nicknamed Awa Odori airport in honour of the festival! I won’t get into the origin stories but it’s basically a huge harvest dance that coincides with o-bon season in Japan. This is the time of the year when the spirits of ancestors are honoured. Awa = Ye Olde Tokushima. Odori = Dance.

Dance, dance, dance.

Tokushima City

I had made a brief visit to Tokushima to eat chicken with Flash earlier in the summer and earlier again to visit a temple with Yas but I hadn't seen the city properly. Two other JETs, Arran and Ben, did great work in organising a Kagawa contingent to come and watch the dancing. This included a large number of the new JETs who arrived to Kagawa in waves this summer. This must have been a great welcome for them. This is definitely the coolest thing I've seen in Shikoku. By miles!

We got the special Awa Odori express train from Marugame (seriously) and met Flash at the station. Then a kind of Brownian Motion of people started. It was after a little while exploring the stalls and buying the beersies and the fried things on sticks that the viewing of the actual dancing happened. Much like a Japanese Junior High sports day, the dancing is almost painfully regimented. But it's also curiously hypnotising. A former JET named Ryan made the dancing sound a little like Reggaeton when he did a little rendition of the drumming. This turned out to be kind of accurate.







I didn't do any videoing of the dancing myself but here's a sample.

This is going to sound silly and possibly clichéd but there was something in the air that photography and (other people’s) video can’t quite capture. The place was just so charged with excitement! The only time I remember being as giddy as I was in Tokushima was in 2003. And that was in Disneyland Paris, for goodness’ sake. Seeing Flash again after his extremely busy summer study programme was a bonus. Here we are!

I have a souvenir from the festival that is very dear to me. We spent a good while beside a kind of a warm-up area where the different dance troupes got ready. The good people of Nexco corporation had either sponsored or put together a dance group and I was quite close to them and shouting encouragement. Their hype-man (a lady who was seventy if she was a day) gave me a fan as a token of her gratitude and as a way to advertise Nexco. I continue to use the Nexco fan every day in work. I am cooling my brow and neck and I am advertising Nexco – so we both win. When I was given this fan, I felt like the Wu-Tang clan had just asked me to be their Tenth General. That's the fan in my paw in the picture above there with Flasho.





Dancing

Anyone who has seen me dance will know that all my moves are augmented by grimacing. In the same way that Nicole once told me that drummers always lose control of their faces because they have to use both hands and both feet at the same time, I surrender control of my mouth while surrendering my hands, feet, bumbum, elbows, shoulders and snakehips to the ancient gods of dance.

This is why if I ever go back to Awa Odori (and I really and truly do want to go back to Awa Odori) then I have to really work on one thing. Smiling. If my non-smiling face when I’m standing still is a scowl and my non-smiling face when I’m dancing is a kind of contortion in which my nostrils try to take back my moustache and both my lips, then how on earth can I ever hope to look like I’m enjoying myself like all these Tokushimians? It’s a genuine concern. They’ll be all like ‘why does he look so upset?’ and mothers will cover their children’s eyes and the whole festival will be cancelled.

There’s only one thing I can do, I suppose. I must dust off the full length mirror and I must find out what the latest sounds from Tokushima do to my face while my feet start to steppin'.

I’ll see you there August 2014.

Blog roll

Something remarkable has happened since my last blog. People are actually asking me about my blog and when the next entry is going to appear. Asking me in REAL LIFE, I mean. This is a big surprise to me. I presumed people knew that I was still alive and wearing the same hat in every picture because I keep getting tagged in photos on Facebook. But I did half promise to do blog posts when I had adventures and this was a true adventure with a truly great bunch of people.

So. Dad, Jae-Eun, Pat and anybody else who asked about my blog: this one’s for you.

Dreams Never End