Gujo's All-Night Dance Festival!

Yuko sensei sitting with many obi.

The holiday Obon is a traditional Buddhist celebration honoring deceased relatives.  It is customary to return to your hometown and pay tribute to ancestor's grave sites, as the spirits are said to return during Obon.  It is celebrated for three days around August 15th, though the specific dates differ across Japan.  In Gifu prefecture, Obon was celebrated August 13-15, and we took part in the festivities.

Obon is attributed to a Buddhist monk who learned his mother was suffering in a realm of hungry ghosts.  He began a series of sacrifices to free her, and as he did so, he realized all her selflessness and sacrifice to him during her lifetime.  When she was finally freed, he danced for joy.

Close to Gifu, there is a large city named Gujo, famous for its summertime all-night dance festivals.  During Obon, there are special dances performed to welcome and honor the spirits, in the tradition of that first monk dancing for joy at his mother's release.  We traveled to a part of Gujo called Shirotori, and danced the night away.  Festival attendees wear traditional yukata, or light cotton kimono, so before we left for Gujo we went to my dance teacher's home and she dressed me, my friend Audrey, her daughter Shio, and her friend Riho in beautiful yukata.  Fun fact: only Audrey had her own yukata.  Shio, Riho, and I borrowed from Yuko sensei!

  Above: the dressing process.  First, Yuko sensei tied a belt around my hips and pulled the yukata up and folded it over the belt, creating a small flap I helped press flat.  Then she linked another belt around my ribs to hold the upper part of the garment in place.  She began to tie the obi, or sash, around my waist and halfway through that put in a hard, half-moon shaped board-like object to keep the obi smooth all night (it worked).  Finally she tied the ornate bow, which stood up in the back quite smartly, and added fun, colorful accessories.  She repeated this process another three times to dress all four of us.  Her creativity and prowess was astounding.

The results!  Shio, Audrey and I show off our outfits.

Once we were all dressed, which took a lot of time, we climbed in the car and drove the hour to Gujo.  Shio picked Shirotori to visit because the dances are faster than those of other communities in Gujo and she likes the faster dances better.  The dances are called Bon Odori, which just means a type of dance done only during Obon.  The dances are performed in a circle around a giant float called a yagura, on which singers and musicians perform.  Professional Obon dancers continuously dance in a circle around the yagura, teaching festival attendees each dance as it is called by the music.  At our festival the dances moved clockwise, though that isn't always the direction.  At most times there were two outer circles of attendees, sometimes three, as the dancers waxed and waned.  We arrived at 8:30pm, and danced until 12:30am.  Before we arrived and long after we left, the dances went on.

Above: Gujo festivities!  Upper left: some drummers perform outside the dance circle.  Here they are switching lead drummers in mid-strike.  Upper right: Riho and Audrey join the dancing circle!  Lower left: a good view of the yagura surrounded by circles of dancers.  Lower right: Shio and me in the circle.  Below: a few videos showing a little of the dancing in Gujo.  The one on the left shows Shio and me in the circle.  The one on the right shows Shio, Matt and I dancing a particularly rhythmically difficult dance after the fact.  Matt's a little embarrassed he messed up near the end.

We went with such cool people and we had such a great time dancing and goofing off.  Some of our antics are pictured to the left.  It's a stereotype of Japanese people to say they usually won't act the way they did with us.  I think most young Japanese are exactly the same as other young people, with the same sense of humor and propensity for doing silly things.  We pretended to fight each other, and took turns picking each other up, all between dances, of course.  Once, a group of Chinese girls approached us and asked to have a photo with Audrey and me because we were white girls in yukata.  We obliged, with a bit of brow furrowing (Audrey said she feels like a zoo animal when this happens, and it happens often), and Chinese from Matt.

Shio, me, Audrey, and Riho at the festival.

Zoo animals aside, we had a great time with our friends, and made some new ones.  Matt had fun in the husband club, with both Shio and Riho's husbands, and I was proud of him as the only man in our group to dance that evening.  Although I still don't think I'll be purchasing a yukata of my own anytime soon (I still have more than a few hangups about being "that white girl"), I loved getting dressed up by Yuko sensei and learning traditional Japanese dances.  I definitely want to go to a festival like this again!