3.e The mikoshi returns: inverting the process - unwrapping the deity out of the mikoshi - wrapping up the Shrine

After the mikoshi arrives, the names of the givers are outside the Shrine walls. Women and men gather around and read out the names, gossiping about the amount of prestations given by each neighbour. Children play around, buying toys, food, and fishing or playing fish games. Once in the Shrine, an inversion of the process begins. The deity is unwrapped and put back in its place, and the wrapping cloths are hidden. The inversion also happens for the Shrine: all that had been unwrapped in order to meet the deity is wrapped again. The kannushi proceeds to wrap what he had unwrapped, he seals the box, pulls the curtain and hides the wrapping cloth he used inside his travelling case. He ritually finishes his purification, states the date, and congratulates the sodai. The toya brings the sake, the tea, and the trays of wrapped food. The toya or a sodai also gives the kannushi an envelope with his fees. The kannushi accepts it with a bow and cleanses it with a ritual gesture. He puts the envelope into his case with no delay. As the kannushi leaves,[54] the toya and sodai leave the Shrine to meet the mikoshi and the danjiri. They unwrap the Shrine, dismantle the mikoshi and the danjiri and put everything back into the Shrine. The rhythm of work is soft but persistent. Men work together, matching their abilities to push and carry without showing tiredness. They seem to forget the intoxication of the sake while carrying the mikoshi. In less than half an hour, as sun begins to set, in the twilight, the Shrine is finally unwrapped and sealed again. The feast continues inside the annexed house.

Every village has a ‘feast’ and entertainment or utage. Utage can be understood as a form of unpacking the formality (Hendry 1995) and conversely as wrapping the distance between the Shrine and villagers. The atmosphere on these occasions is semi-formal, with people sitting around middle tables, and women coming in out of the kitchen (or close to fires) with bancha and prepared food (toasted tea). As Hiraoka, an informant, told me:

Festivals are a good way for you to experience the different cultures of Kamikatsu. You will see how each household has different ways of cooking. They also have different bentos and furoshiki, each house is different, every festival is different, we have a varied culture in Kamikatsu.

This theme of food is much commented on by everybody. An elderly woman argues: ‘After marriage women have to learn the ways of cooking of the house of their husband’. Basically there are subtle differences in the ways of boiling rice, wrapping fish and adding flavour and colour to dishes. The host begins by offering a ritual sip of sake to the kannushi,[55] and proceeds by offering sake to everybody. The atmosphere gradually becomes relaxed. There is theatre, songs, karaoke, dances, sumo, competitions to win gifts, and fireworks. The sodai have their last private ritual. During the eating and drinking, they begin to discuss in low tones who is going to be next year’s toya. They thank this year’s toya, and decide who should be next. Villagers also become more talkative and most formalities are abandoned. The advantages of this were mentioned by Atsuko, my host:

‘As we are Catholics, we do not pay the full maintenance fee. Because we do not pay, we do not go to festivals, either. This year however, I went for my children’s sake. I found out that when people share food and drink sake, villagers talk openly. I did not know, for instance, that they did not like the way we maintained our road and parked our car. I learned that I have to trim the vegetation of the road, because it is a communal road; and we will have to move the car into our entrance yard. Although the other place is right at the entrance of our house, it does not belong to the boundaries of the house, it is part of our neighbours’ land. I did not know this at all. So, it was a good thing that I went to the festival. I would never have known about these things and tension would have built up without us knowing. People here are too shy, and they did not dare to tell me all these things. They are polite. But these things caused tension. They came out in the festival. It is done in a way that people do not feel bad about it, you do not take it the wrong way.’

Atsuko presents the drinking parties as occasions when she felt she was ‘wrapped up’ into the community, as opposed to the rest of the year in which ‘everybody keeps to themselves’, and ‘we do not know what happens, people would not tell’. It was the beginning of an experience of ‘wrappedness’, rather than just nakedness, of social dispositions. Relations during the year were tightly wrapped around her, but did not include her more than marginally, so she could not see what was going on. It is possible to argue, as in Hendry’s view, that they had ‘unwrapped’ the usual package of relations that was not available to her before. They were wrapping us around the concept of how to present the household and the boundaries. The consequence was that more social control on the external aspect of my host’s household and its boundaries was applied. What appeared to me as an initial ‘unwrapping’ of feelings was in fact a way to correct the presentation of the house and the trespassing of which we were unaware. The festival unwrapped the package of sociability, its rules and obligations.

[54] like many other people, he also takes the unconsumed food wrapped in furoshiki back home
[55] In several villages the kannushi moves to the annexed house for utage. In other villages sodai and kannushi are separated from mikoshi and danjiri. In larger village’s sodai partake with kannushi separately but they offer entertainment, songs, and dances to the villagers. The differences speak for the kind of political implication of sodai into the life of the village. The more separation between sodai and mikoshi, the less they share food together.