Stacey's Bodacious Japan Trip: Battling Kite Festival in Niigata!

6/4/2017

This day Cormac and I woke up early and made our way to Niigata City for a local Kite Festival! It is pretty unique as far as local festivals go.

We parked our car near the festivities and walked towards the main street just off the banks of the Nakanokuchi River. The place where they hold the kite festival is about halfway between Niigata City proper and Sanjo City, in a suburb of Niigata City called Shirone.

Shirone Manhole Cover.

Here are a bunch of the larger kites all rolled up, waiting to be flown.

Here you can see one group unrolling one. Look how big it is!

We walked past the shopping street with the local wares and festival foods and went straight up to the banks of the river to see the kites.

This festival is called the Shirone Giant Kite Festival aka (takomatsuri) has been going on for a couple of hundred years. The kite festival started in the Edo Period (1600-1867) and continues to this day. The festival takes place over five days in June every year. Inside a building along the main street of the festival, there was a building that showed old pictures of this festival. A lot of the pictures were from pre-1950's! They were so cool!

The different districts in the town all have their own different design on their giant kites. These giant kites are 24 tatami mats big. The different districts make many big kites and paint them all the same way. Many smaller kites (about the size of a grown man lying spread eagle) are flown by different companies and groups in the city. The different groups make these kites by hand out of paper, rope and bamboo. They are also hand painted over the course of the year. Each team has dozens of kites painted in the same manner so they can be identified in the sky. There were many places in the surrounding streets that had places where the individual groups were assembling their kites and getting them ready to be flown.

This was one team's pile of wrecked kites.

The object of the festival is that these different companies and teams fly their kites above the river on both sides. They then try to entangle the ropes of their kites with the ropes of some other kites on the other side of the river. Once the kites become tangled up the teams on each side of the river engage in a tug-of-war until one of the ropes break. The winning team is the team that did not have their ropes break and are the team to drag the kites through the water of the river, and up the river banks.

Only 1-2 people are needed to fly the smaller kites.

You can clearly see here some of the smaller kites getting tangled.

As we were watching on the near side of the river, we saw a lot of people transporting their kites to different areas of the river. The large kites had to be rolled up into cylinders so they could be transported. Even the smaller kites had to be carried by two people.

You can see just how many ropes are needed for these big kites!

During this day the wind was not great. At first it was blowing too hard, so the kites on our side of the river were blowing out over the town and not over the river. This caused the kites to get tangled on rooftops and power lines and not with other kites. Later that day the wind died down and it was hard to keep any kites in the air at all. There were some times throughout the day that the wind was favorable and we were able to see some exciting kite battles.

On this day, and I don’t know if this is typical, only the smaller kites were engaging in battles and the large kites were just being flown from the beginning of our section of river to the end. Then they would crash/drop the kite and pull it in. Kites were not reusable after being flown. They broke and dissolved in the river. Most of the time only the bamboo frames and ropes were recovered from the river.

You can see where the paper dissolved and the bamboo frame clearly.

We watched for quite a long time, but we soon started to feel hungry, so we went back to the shopping street with all the festival food tents.

I love Engrish oh so much!

The street was lined with shops selling their wares as well as any festival food stand you could imagine. Over the course of the day we tried a few street foods. ‘Mac got a kebab and a few other foods throughout the day, I had a bite or two. I got a banana that was covered in chocolate and sprinkles.

One of the first stalls I saw was a shop that was selling little handmade figures made out of lacquered magazine paper (I think) and holding little wire and paper replicas of the kites we saw. This shop also had a wall display made of bamboo, reeds and paper. It was a display of the different kites we saw in the sky as well. The shop also sold small kites, but they were quite expensive despite their small size. At the end of the day I ended up buying a wall display of the kites, we stopped at the shop on the way back to the car.

We went back up to the rider, but this time we wanted to watch them launch the big kites on the other side of the river. So we went to the far end of the section of river they were using and crossed to the other side of the river using a footpath bridge.

The two of us stood on the sidelines for a long while watching them launch the large kites up over the river. I started sitting on a metal road barrier and watched as each team lined up with their ropes, the kite was unfurled and supported top-up with large forked poles. The long, forked poles are for helping launch the kite into the air so it has a better change of catching the wind. Then the men started running and pulling the kites after them. The wind had kind of died down at this point so a lot of the kites didn’t have much lift and fell into the rivers.

I absolutely loved this guys' hair!

Close up!

We were watching for a while and it was getting late in the afternoon. The next kite team came up and they were waiting for their team to set up the kite so they could start running and lift it. I noticed that one man had on Nike brand exercise clothes and that the bright purple, orange and green triangular, geometric patterns on his pants was the same on his shoes. I pointed this out to ‘Mac and we were talking about how cool his shoes were. He saw us talking and gesturing to his shoes so he came up to us and started talking to us. He was talking about how he had to learn English in junior high and high school, but he didn’t remember a thing. He and his friend then offered us their hapi coats and their places in the kite launching. We were super excited and eagerly accepted. How nice of them was that?!

I took a few photos of ‘Mac while we were standing there waiting for the launch to start, and one of the men offered to take some photos of us when we started running. I accepted and gave him my phone.

We stood there for another minute but when we were told to run, it was still sudden. That kite was a lot heavier and a lot harder to run with than I had previously thought. About halfway down the road I was already getting tired and having a hard time keeping my hold on the rope, but I gambare’d and found strength and endurance I didn’t know I had and kept running. When we were close to the end of the run was when the crowds along the side started tapering out and I was able to let go and run to the side. I was so tired! ‘Mac let go of the kite rope a few seconds after I did. We watched the kite fly over the river for a few seconds before turning and walking back to the men with my phone.

We made our way through the crowds and back to the men who let us take their place during this launch. We gave them back their hapi coats and I got my phone back from them. I looked through the pictures and there were a couple of good action shots of us running with the kite. The pictures I took of ‘Mac before I gave the dude my phone were missing though. It is strange to think about, but did that dude delete the pictures of Cormac and none others, or did my phone experience a glitch of some kind and delete them? I will never know for sure, but, sadly, I don’t have those photos of Cormac.

Here you can clearly see the long, forked poles that help launch the kite into the air.

And the poles post-launch.

Here were a few of the different hapi coats the different teams wore. You can see many more in the other pictures as well.

Soon after this we had our fill of kites and decided to head back to Fukushima City. It was at this time that I stopped at that kite shop and bought the wall hanging.