Nova Atlantis

Dontaku is one of Fukuoka’s two big matsuri (festivals). There are three ways to tell Dontaku apart from Yamakasa:

Dontaku happens in the spring, during Golden Week, rather than in July.
It happens at a normal time of day, rather than kicking off at 4:59 am.
Everyone wears pants. Well, most people.

I realize I’m making Yamakasa sound more interesting–and, well, it is, but you’re going to have to wait for July before I tell you more. Hey, if you’re really curious about the lack-of-pants thing, google it. Warning: it’s the men who don’t wear pants. And many of them are very old.

OK, so Dontaku isn’t the big flashy dangerous pantsless event that Yamakasa is, but it’s fun in a more comfortable way. It’s about 800 years old, and these days involves turning the Tenjin downtown shopping district into a maze of stages, on which all sorts of groups perform, mostly dancing, and mostly amateur–but since it’s the most popular festival in Japan during Golden Week, there are a lot of stars and pros showing up, too.

The big event is a parade (two, actually) down Meiji-dori, a big thoroughfare. Just about anyone who can form a group can enter the parade–there’s marching bands from various schools, dancing troupes of housewives, lawyer groups, whatever. There’s a group from Pusan, the nearby Korean city, and a group of international residents. Meiji-dori is lined with the requisite food stalls selling things like squid-on-a-stick and octopus balls, and the games of chance like goldfish catching.

Squid onna stick–Terry Pratchett would be proud.

There are other, smaller parades, too, and avatars of the 7 Lucky Gods of China ride on ponyback with the main parades and the smaller ones, wearing wooden masks, to bless the city.

One of the distinctive things is the flowered crane hats that the ladies wear. The flowers are pretty, but the big crane head rearing up to peck your eyes out is a bit off-putting.

Oh, you may also notice these ladies have rice-paddles in their hands. This is another symbol of Dontaku. I’ve been told it’s because long, long ago some housewife heard the "don-don" of the drums, and went running out of the house to see the parade so fast she forgot to put down her cooking utensil. Anyway, the dancers use them for percussion.

Sorry about the picture quality–I only had my mobile phone with me, not my real camera.