Inaka Life in Japan: Ton Ten Ton

There is a famous festival in Imari every year called Ton-Ten-Ton. On the surface, it looks like any other festival in Japan: Lots of street vendors selling food and tickets to games of chance, tons of tough looking High Schoolers with shaved eyebrows, and High School girls wearing their school uniforms even though its the weekend (with their skirts hiked up, I might add).

So, yes, on the surface, it may seem like an everyday run-of-the-mill festival. But look a little closer and you will see something quite different. Ton-Ten-Ton's roots are based around the feudal struggle between the commoners and nobility. It culminates in the smashing of two shrines together (each one representing their class), and seeing which one falls into the river. The smashing begins with a lot of trash talking between the two sides. Most of what they were saying was completely unintelligible to me because everyone was so drunk. Basically, some guy would get on top of one of the shrines, yell some stuff, and then a bunch of guys would go jump in the freezing river for fun. After their friends drag them out, they lift up the shrines and run into each other; trying to flip the other's into the river. This actually goes on for many hours, since the shrines do not flip into the river right away. If the peasants shrine gets flipped in, then the nobility will have a good harvest. If its the other way around, the peasants will catch lots of fish. The name Ton-Ten-Ton is derived from the sound that the drummer makes as the shrine align each other to commence flipping. Very dramatic.

It made me cold to see those guys jump in the river, but I gotta admit, it was fun as hell watch.

Enjoy the pics! (Also, I apologize in advance for the crappyness of the pictures. Most of them are stills from my digicams video function.

The calm before the storm.