2.a Appropriation of festivals and the making of tradition

Making the town in Kamikatsu revolves primarily around the definition of an image that summarises the identity of the town. It is in the process of re-enactment and appropriation that gifts are key elements of mediation of all ‘appropriation’, ‘communality’ and ‘town making’. The main example of this is the santainotsuki (three-moons rising). I consider this example in detail to illustrate the kind of gift exchange practised, and to bring out the complexity that is usually lost when looking only at the moment of exchange.

The three moons rising festivals takes place in mid-August in a remote Shrine in one of the most remote districts of Kamikatsu. The festival is based on the theme of moon watching, a popular pastime in many areas of Japan. The difference of this festival is the natural phenomena associated with it. Late at night, when the moon comes out behind the mountains, it is possible, from a distance, to see not one but three moons rising.[72] The magic character of the almost forgotten festival was taken up by the town office, and three moons were adopted as the town’s logo. The participation of the town office in the festival is disguised. It is done through one or two of its representatives, who bring some presentations as prizes in games during the event, or else finance the sodai who open the festival. These prestations cost them little, some being obtained at a reduced price from sellers who want to be seen as ‘giving’ and making the town. The two main prestations are a book, onzen tickets (donated by the onzen) and mushrooms, which are obtained from the JA.

The festival starts with an arduous climb to a small temple, where people living in the vicinity have left offerings of sake and fruit, similar to those offerings made at the autumn festival. The sake was bought at a shop at no discount, and the vegetables were from the garden, making up for the expense of the sake. The offerings are made individually by the toya and sodai of the area without the participation of any of the assistants. A few local households and villagers (mostly associated with the town office), the English teacher, and tourists and journalists start arriving shortly after ten, bringing their furoshiki, bentos and drinks. The atmosphere is convivial and relaxed, with people greeting each other as they arrive, sitting inside or outside, depending on the weather, with their friends and family. Plays and songs are performed.

Takochan, a charismatic and talented young man in his mid-thirties, performs and entertains at these festivals. He organises games of chance in which prestations of ‘no-value’, bells, soap, tickets for the onzen, are won. Janken (stone, scissors, paper) is the most popular game of chance. Takochan manages to make them all play janken, to everybody’s enjoyment. Number games and word games are also played. Villagers sit sharing their drinks and bento with their neighbours, and as alcohol takes effect, people move around offering more drinks. Takochan starts a new round of games of janken in which a noshigami-wrapped shitake (mushroom) is offered as the highest prize. The following year the noshigami wrapped box of mushroom was contributed by a local householder who had bought it at the market. Takochan and the sodai house thank the neighbour, who makes a shy gesture of deprecation and disappears to the back of the house. Another neighbour comes and after greeting everybody is invited to join in. After a short talk he approaches the sodai and very discretely offers him a wrapped prestation of money. The sodai thanks him and hides it underneath his wife’s furoshiki. My host does not want to talk about it, but says only that it must be ‘help’ towards the cost of the festival. Several people film the event with professional video cameras. One of the young men filming hopes to make a promotional video. People greet new visitors with their fans, and the English teacher receives one fan from a neighbour as a ‘kimochi’, a feeling donation. foreigners are put on a stand and asked about their age, hobbies, countries, food and family, as part of the entertainment. Takochan translates even when one teacher speaks good Japanese.

As the hours pass, some people move around the dark forest with torches, commenting on the age of trees, and a few others make donations of coins and prayers to the deity in the Shrine. A woman in her mid-forties sitting next to Junko, a nine year old child, gives her part of the prestations of soap she got in janken. At the other end of the room one neighbour gets drunk and starts telling his friends about his sexual prowess, and his wife’s enjoyment. Everybody laughs and the English teacher expresses surprise at the openness of his sexual jokes, but no one listens – festivals are not occasions for opinions and rational thought. Jokes, songs, shyness, laughter, polite and medetai conversation, and word-play are much preferred.

The entertainment continues until half an hour after midnight, when the moon should appear. Expectation grows, and everybody gathers at the only spot from where the moon is visible. No politeness is expected, people fight to get the best positions with little embarrassment. After minutes of intense staring into the black sky, the three moons rise. A word of banzai (hooray) and three ritual clapping, and joy explodes. After few seconds the moon disappears again and Takochan gathers all the assistants. In a circle and hand in hand, they say farewell by thanking everybody, rejoicing in the success of the occasion or hoping for better luck next time, and raising their arms three times with banzai (hooray!). A final clapping from everybody finishes the event and the circle dissolves. In a few seconds the furoshiki are full of bento and other items and the Shrine is closed. Omiyage, left over food and cans of drinks, are given to the young and the foreigners, and people say goodbye to each other.

The Santainotsuki festival is a good illustration of the kind of exchange relations that are encountered in town festivals. Prestations in this context are ones in which ‘things’ are given as prizes for participation and kimochi, with no obligation involved. Money and other wrapped gifts are also classified as kimochi, although those who make the prestations feel that obligation is part of their duties as neighbours and town members. The prestations here, despite being the same as those encountered in the village festival in the autumn, define donors and givers as the ‘community’ of the town. The references to the village are played down. Ceremony and ritual are lacking and local dialect and directness are used instead. Donors of prestations to the group are not known. The figure of the ‘entertainer’, a person who leads the event in the most gentle and ‘happy’ of all possible ways, is crucial in defining the mystification of the main giver of prestations. The role of entertainer-cum-speaker appears on all occasions when gifts and commodities are given on behalf of the town. On another level of relations, onzen tickets and commodities like towels and soap are offered to entertainers and those who ‘help’ during the year or after the event, to ‘thank’ them for their work. It is important to stress that villagers consider games of chance as a socialising activity. Luck is not presented as a random event but as a measure of the individual’s skill. Winning prizes is one of the processes in which individuals are in a gentle and indirect way coerced to accept prestations, and as such coerced to appropriate the goods the town throws to them as a group. The fact that games of janken among others are constructed as ‘tanoshii’ (amusing), rather than an obligation or a competition, diffuses the feeling that individuals are actually made to play and enter in competition with each other. I want to stress that these practices, just like the throwing of mochi, appear insignificant in accounts of exchange, but they are immensely popular and constitute one of the most important occasions of the communal manifestations of ideas about exchange and gifts. They are particularly significant for the understanding of gifts as compensatory elements of social relations.[73]

[72] Two versions exist of the phenomena. One in which the moon is said to triplicate itself wit no explanation being part of the myth of the power of natural life. The second argues that the mountain where the viewing takes place is at an angle that allows to see the moon reflected in both the sea and the fog, causing a tripartite mirror effect. Since the distance blurs the difference between sea and sky, three round moons rise during few seconds and disappear. Of the two occasions in which I was present, only in one was it possible to see the two-moon reflection. The second, to the disappointment of a few children did not happened due to weather conditions.
[73] Janken is highly preferred because it is a ‘soft’ competition, where individuals can both lose or win without entering in any overt conflict or quarrel. Competition is disguised or made less visible with janken.