21 August 2007 Setsubun
No, this is not a rave. This is a yearly festival at the Fujinomori shrine, a thousand-year old shrine near where were used to live. This particular festival is Setsubun, a which serves to mark the seasons and inculcate fear of the other into young Japanese minds at the same time. A real two-fer. Part of the ritual is to have these scary demons show up, at which point the kids are given little beans and encouraged to pelt the demons with the beans, shouting “Demons go outside! Health and happiness come inside!” I actually like this for its complete lack of any PC sentiment. You just don’t get 2 and 3 year olds expressing ritualized hatred towards the other in US culture, and I think we’re poorer for it.
Anyway, Fujinomori shrine puts on a big show each setsubun, with a whole staged morality play with bad demons and good angels and everything. It was pretty psychedelic.
