Onbashira

The Onbashira festival, litterally the honorable pillar, is one of the most famous celebration in Japan. It is held every 7 years in Suwa, the city in Nagano Prefecture from which Kumiko is from and where I lived in 2003.

Every 7 years the main temples in the city exchanges the pillars they have in their gardens with new ones. These pillars are actually trunks of huge trees cut from the forests in the mountains surrounding the city.

There is lot of work to do and everything has to be done in the traditional way: cutting the trees, shaping the trunks, making the ropes, transporting the tree, everything is done by hand or using ancient tools. The aid of modern instruments is not allowed.



The trunks have to be transported from the mountains to the city for tens of kilometers. This is done by men pulling the ropes while other men are riding the tree. The way to the city is not an easy one. The trunks must be pulled down some incredibly steap slopes and thrown to a river. Floating to the river, the trunks are then transported to city. While these dangerous operations are done people continue riding the trunks!!! As you can imagine accidents can always happen...
It actually takes months before the trunks arrive to the city. So the celebration is done in different days during the year, following the trunks coming to the temples. I wasn't there myself but I've been told the most exciting (and dangerous) part is when the trunks are taken down from the mountains to the river. I've seen some pictures and it looks both crazy and amazing.



Once the trunks arrive in Suwa, they're taken off the river and transported to a street that takes to the temples. Several hundred thousand people arrivee to see the festival. As you can see from the picture the streets are incredibly busy and it takes two days for moving the trunks of few kilometers. In the meantime a large part of the city become a party place! People are just in a great mood. There are lot of stands where you can drink sake for free and families living in that area invite strangers for lunch (it happened to me too!).



And there are lots of events in the streets: parades, dancers and japanese drummers among the others.




This is the end of the celebration: the trunk has arrived to the temple and the people are trying to make it stand up. There are four temples and each temple has 4 pillars, i.e. 16 trunks. The city is diveded in 16 areas and to each area is responsible for one pillar. It is a great honour to be the boss of your area, but the biggest honour is to have the tallest pillar (of course each pillar has a different height and the biggest goes to the main temple). In the picture you can recognize one boss: he's on the top of the pillar wearing a white yukata.

Unfortunately this post is not enough to understand what is really Onbashira. But believe me in one the most amazing things I've seen. For the ones of you that can read japanese, you can check this link 御柱web.