The Festival Spirit
I used to know a guy, he spent some time living on the military base in Okinawa, Japan. He told me something about Japanese people based on his experience. Something along the lines of, “Japanese people are super introverted. But they have outlets.” And my first thought was actually of their festivals, which they seem to make a much bigger deal out of compared to Americans.
Little girl posing in front of penis mikoshi
This photo was taken in front of Kanayama Shrine, some miles south of Tokyo. The first thing you might notice is the oversized pink dildo, and the second is that there is a little girl just standing next to it. There is a little girl standing next to a giant pink penis.
As it turns out, this is just part of the parade. There was an event going on here, called Kanamara Matsuri, or as translated on Wikipedia, “Festival of the Steel Phallus.”
It’s a penis festival. You’ll find pictures of all sorts of penis-related silliness and shenanigans that people take a part in, whether it be penis costumes or penis-shaped lollipops or other penis paraphernalia. It’s gained quite a lot of fame overseas, for reasons that you can imagine – just another reason for Japan’s international reputation as a bizarre world of its own.
Here’s a 10-minute YouTube video if you want to know more.
Of course, this kind of thing is not and should not be representative of ordinary life in Japan. As my friend stated, this is probably one of those ‘outlets’ that he’s talking about – where the expectations aren’t explicit enough to directly inform your behavior, but where you have some freedom to do things and have your reason be “Because it’s expected in this time and place, isn’t it?”
I met some people who did overseas study in Japan, and they told me about this custom that they called “Nomunication,” a play on the English word ‘communication’ and the Japanese verb, ‘nomu’ (to drink). Students and teachers go to a bar together, have a few drinks, and talk casually in a non-academic setting. The normal expectation for student-teacher relationships is very formal – teachers are to be respected, and the boundary is very strict. However, once everyone’s downed a few drinks, you’re free to ask whatever questions you want, and if at some point someone feels some boundary has been crossed, you simply apologize and say something like “I had too much to drink and I didn’t have the best judgment.”
“Here in this time and place, you are expected to be free.”