Photographic delirium #2

The Nagoya Festival is essentially a parade of three groups comprising the Aichi prefecture police bands, many flower cars and a historic character parades. The police bands looked a lot like the typical American police parade. Walking orchestra and cheerleader girls with long hats. The Nagoya queen, riding in a limousine, is also very pretty and gorgeous while her counterpart is looking more like pervert political man. Gilles actually took that photo. When we arrived, I secured my spot on the side of the road to get the maximum volume of light. With the daytime passing by, light went away from my corner. I had to run away like a crazy to a brighter spot. Crowd was everywhere and I finally missed the queenc Zut!

But I did not miss the ultimate queen of prefecture's valiant past history: the courtesan of the Shogun Oda Nobunaga lovely named "Nene" and her cohort of servants. All dressed in the most proper Japanese style, she was dubbed as the most well versed in all the fine arts. In 1568, Oda Nobunaga seized power from the imperial court. When the Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi from the powerful Osaka area met with Nobunaga, he fell in love with the angelic Nene. He asked his fellow Shogun the hand of his mistress in exchange of a process of pacification and unification of central Japan (including the Nagoya region). The diminutive size and pop-eyed features of Hideyoshi earned him the nickname of Saru-san (Mr. Monkey). Poor Nene! After Nobunaga's terrible suicide, he extended unification so that by 1590, the whole country was under his rule.

I flushed many pictures trying to do close-up photography with the many wonderfully dressed and white powdered geisha impersonators. But the results are amazing. I am proud of this picture (she is not the real Nene but I would call her my own little Nene, he he) and it is one of my best. The wig that she is wearing is not perfect I concede but nevertheless, her defiant eyes and the make-up details are effervescent of a long preparation for this festival. Please, remark the lipstick work is far from the outstretched Marilyn Monroe characteristic kiss and smack lips.

This time, we have a local to help in our festivities: Atsuko, an exquisite Gamagolian! Gamagori is a city of its own, at half an hour from Kariya where I stay. She knows the schedule by heart because she watched the festival since she is a child. The festival is 300 years old. We have seen mikoshis (portable shrines) at the Yaizu festival before. Since Gamagori is a coastal city, the mikoshis are brought to the ocean shores to praise the gods of the sea while little boys, sitting inside, play music. Ultimately, they are carried into water for a 200 meters strained walk at the shear joy of the spectators. It is the end of October and the Pacific Ocean, even in Japan, is quite cold. Brrr! That was considered the main event of the festival.

Later on, at the nearby temple, six different groups of children performers dance at the rhythm of a Japanese wooden flute. The children are beautifully dressed in gold in a complex fashion mixing Samurai and buffoon styles. Their face whitened and eyes and lips painted in a lavishly scarlet color, they emanate an extremely mystical and almost extraterrestrial aura. These wonderful children will remain in my memories for a long time. And I am now writing about it still searching for words to describe the unusual ambience and these strange characters. After a few hours, I was exhausted mostly because I took so many pictures that I surprised myself! Very crowded, dark and the children swirling and moving a lot, I learned that these were difficult conditions for photography as well (out of 4 films, I used only one 400 ASA, the other were too slow at 100 ASA).