Otsu Matsuri

“So how many puppeteers operate the karakuri ningyo?” I ask Mr. Yamada.

“Karako” he corrects. "Four."

“And the karakuri ningyo’s age?” I ask.

“Karako” he insists.

Karako was the only name these mechanical puppets went by in Toda, and it seemed by Mr. Yamada's insistence that calling them anything else was blasphemous.

It was an easy enough word, karako, but I had to forget what I previously spent hours practicing. Before I arrived in Japan I rehearsed my bow in the shower, trying to bend at a dignified 45 degrees, and repeated the Japanese words for "mechanical doll" over and over. "Ka-rakuri ningyo, kala-kurri ning-yo, ka-da-kuri ning-yo".

At some point I got a handle on the phrase and now when I tell people why I came to Japan I don't have to move my arms like a robot while saying the word for "doll" over and over again. But the more festivals I attend, the more I realize that every matsuri has its own vernacular. Karakuri ningyo only gets me so far.

The terminology is not the only difference. The puppets' mechanics, the performance techniques, and the design of the dashi are just a few of the distinctions you'll come across in each city. There's no place you'll experience these differences more vividly than at Otsu Matsuri. 

According to my mentor Yasuko Senda-san, until the 1980s outsiders were not openly invited to attend Japanese matsuri. While we imagine the "outsider" as a backpacking Westerner, during the Edo period when many of these Matsuri developed, an "outsider" could be anyone who didn't live in the town. It was considered a disservice to the city, the shrine’s deities, and ancestors who participated before to pull influence from other matsuri and homogenize the ritual, language, and performance methods. 

This is one of the many paradoxes I have experienced in Japan. It's a collective society that fosters uniformity, while also maintaining extreme examples of individuality and uniqueness. Japan is known for it's ubiquitous school uniforms and well-dressed salary men, but also for the extraordinarily unique fashions of Harajuku. 

Lucky for me the mechanical puppets in Otsu are called karakuri ningyo, however, instead of dashi, Otsu Matsuri's floats were often called hoko or yama. The hoko look similar to other festival dashi, but they have an additional front wheel and a top tier with wooden benches that criss cross the deck. Instead of playing on the first floor of the float, the ohayashi surround the karakuri ningyo puppets on the uppermost stage. The benches provide space for the musicians to sit, their heads peaking over the edge like a passengers on a riverboat.

 

During the pre-festival afternoon, the kajikata pull the hoko through Otsu's narrow streets. There's no room for the kajikata to dramatically rotate the floats, but there's still plenty of drama as the men haul the hoko up steep slopes to the musical encouragement from the ohayashi. Sure, there's flat roads and wide streets in Otsu, but at a Japanese matsuri, decisions are rarely made out of convenience.

Traffic lights are rotated out of the way of incoming hoko by teams of police officers clutching neon rope, while spectators are forced to squeeze against walls to let the floats pass. As children hang one-handed from the 5 ton hoko and a dozen musicians cram into the 50 square foot stage, it's clear you won't find phrases like safety hazard, capacity limits, or sight lines in the festival handbook.

Unlike the festivals in Aichi Prefecture where the dashi are stored in enormous towering garages, the hoko are dismantled and reconstructed every year. There's over 300 pieces to these 19th century floats, and it takes at least a week to restore just one. The hoko are kept in well-organized storage rooms where you won't find a single screw or nail. The floats are built through a century old technique of interlocking joints. 



That's right, no nails were used in the making of this hoko.

The night before Otsu Matsuri, the hoko line up in the town's narrow alleys and are adorned with hundreds of luminescent Japanese lanterns. 

At each float, visitors are met with cauldrons filled with warm sake, live music, and delicious red bean mochi. 

There's only a few vendors, perhaps because of the lack of space, so the homes facing the festival streets open their garages and offer visitors warm matcha and snacks at makeshift picnic tables. 

The cool breeze, hospitality, and warm tea makes for a cozy evening - but I should enjoy it while it lasts. The sun won't just bring a new day, but about a thousand extra visitors to the tiny streets of Otsu.

At 10:00am, visitors fill the sidewalks near Tenso Shrine. This is the first stop for the karakuri ningyo before they take their annual procession around the city. I feel terrible as I crush an elderly woman with my backpack as the police physically push spectators into ultra-snug clusters to make room for the first hoko.  As the giant float approaches, onlookers race to find the best view. Some have waited hours for this performance and everyone is primed for the show. The ohyashi surround the karakuri ningyo as one young taiko drummer peers over the float and down at my sweaty face with both pity and bewilderment. 

With the release of a loud creaking sigh, the hoko rotates completely away from the audience. Some of the spectators murmur in confusion as the karakuri ningyo face the shrine's entrance disinterested in the crowd's affection. The only audience that counts is the gods, as each puppet show is performed for the unseen deities.

I spend the morning chasing down the hoko with my camera, crawling through crowds, looking for short-cuts around traffic, and trying to get a good view of the karakuri ningyo performances. Traveling through the unfamiliar tiny streets, following music, and trailing behind clusters of people, I'm reminded a bit of Sleep No More, or the one time I sped through Connecticut's Bradley International Airport trying to catch a glimpse of Jennifer Anniston. 

As mentioned previously, the karakuri ningyo at Otsu festival is remarkably different than those in Aichi Precture. Some of the puppets are human-scale with more realistic design. They are often combined with whimsical small-scale puppets that appear from secret compartments.

This use of contrasting scales and fantastical creatures moves the performance in-between reality and the imaginary. The Japanese author Murasaki Shikibu sits at a desk writing The Tale of Genji. Suddenly, her words come to life as miniatures spring up from the bottom of the stage and rotate around her on a mechanical turntable.

Accorrding to Yasuko Senda-san, karakuri ningyo's use of the rotating platform is one of the first examples of the theatrical turntable in Japanese theatrical performance. It was later adopted on a larger scale by Japanese joruri performances.

Besides the difference in scale and aesthetics, the manipulation is Otsu Matsuri is also distinct. For each performance there is only one or two puppeteers who manipulate the puppets from the hoko's middle tier. This area is kept covered by large ornamental embroidery. Instead of operating the puppets directly below the figures, like a conventional rod puppet, the puppeteers use mechanical tracks and strings. As a result, the puppets' movements are more robotic and precise, sort of like a cuckoo clock. These mechanical tracks, or toi, are a trademark of Otsu's karakuri ningyo. 

In one memorable performance there is an external toi that takes the shape of a Japanese tree branch reaching over the hoko and above the audience. A hanging fruit opens to reveal a fairy. The fairy makes his away across the tree branch, and happily dances above the audience. 

In one of my favorite performances, a Japanese flute calls forth a lion. A secret compartment opens on the stage to reveal the adorable mechanical beast. The lion frolics across the toi to the applause of the audience below. 

This lion and fairy performances remind me of the countless colorful characters that appear everywhere imaginable in Japan. Warnings, instructions, and city logos are transformed into big-eyed moments of delight: an endearing amphibian reminds me to avoid putting my hand in-between the elevator's moving doors and an owl dressed like a police officer greets me as I activate a cross-walk signal. 

It's a lot easier to remember to turn off the lights when you leave your apartment when you're prompted by a picture of a deer wearing a kimono. As I watch the Shisa hop across the toi to an adoring crowd, it's clear that Japan's kawaii aesthetic can be traced back to Japanese's rich culture of performance and folklore. 

I want to stick around Otsu to discover the other characters that will unexpectedly emerge from the colorful hoko, but I have a train to catch. Takayama Matsuri starts in just three hours and it's 200 miles away. 

As I slip out of the crowd surrounding the Shisa's float, my vacant spot is quickly filled. I trace my steps back to Otsu Station and pass a couple racing through the back streets, trying to bypass the human congestion to get a good spot for the next performance. The way we race through traffic and nudge through crowds just to gawk up at these characters you'd  think they were celebrities. But they're not. These mechanical actors don't care about our adoration or applause. In fact, I'm certain they'd still be here, with or without us, performing for the gods.

Tsushima Matsuri

It's almost midnight when I arrive back to Nagoya from Toda Matsuri. It's Saturday night, and while groups of young people head out for a night in Naka-Ward, I take the elevator to the eighth floor of my apartment building, eat green tea ice cream and fall asleep without flossing.

At 9:00, I put on my headphones, turn on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and take the train from Nagoya Station to Tsushima. I keep Google Maps open on my iPhone, but it's impossible to miss the stop. The dozen or so dashi tower above the Meitetsu subway line and can be seen from a mile away.

A chorus line of golden floats greets the arriving visitors to Tsushima in a vast concrete parking lot. Like royalty, they remain fifty yards from the crowd, protected by barricades, cameramen, and police officers. Unlike Toda and Tahara Matsuri, this is the type of well known festival that gets pictures in Lonely Planet guidebooks and shows up on the top of Trip Advisor message boards. There's 13 dashi, each with karakuri ningyo, and an additional fleet of six majestic 18th century floats that ferry enormous taiko drums. Embellished in silver plating and detailed cypress accents, these smaller floats look like miniature trireme ships with the main mast shouldering rows of Japanese lanterns.

Groups of Japanese twenty-somethings surround the floats in matching matsuri uniforms, trading jokes and greeting their friends with cold beer. They announce the start of the festival with fierce thumps on the taiko drums. But these thumps don't stop - they continue in rapid succession, shaping the rhythm for the next two hours.

                     

As the music picks-up, it becomes more infectious. The men start to jostle each other towards the taiko drum as the girls hammer on Japanese cymbals known as chanchiki. In Yokosuka, the Japanese flutes and shamisen were stars of the festivals. In Tsushima, they're discarded for the thud of the taiko. 

The cries of sports whistles joins the ensemble as the drums hasten. I'm convinced the sounds are about to reach a final coda, but like a musical magic trick, the drums loop into a never-ending crescendo. Men wrap their arms around their neighbor's shoulders and fall over each other in a musical daze. Perhaps the barricades aren't to protect the dashi from the audience, I think, but to protect the audience from the musicians.

As I watch a girl with purple hair extensions drink an enormous bottle of sake, it starts to feel like I'm watching a party from the front lawn. The mood inside is feverish, pulsating, and exciting - out here, beyond the barricades, it's just kinda hot.




Like a sail rising from the mast, the ebony floats unfurl embroidered canopies and cruise down the main street towards Tsushima Shrine. Groups of adolescent flute players gather on the dashi's first tier and strike up their orchestration, as the floats start their journeys towards the other end of the street. But this half-a-mile stroll is no intermission - it's the main event: a two hour celebration filled with twirling dashi and roaring music. The entire street is filled with lines of spectators, as the 5 ton dashi are rotated 360 degrees over and over in looping madness.

At one intersection there's a dashi turning competition, known as a donden, where the floats are spun six, eight, then ten times in a row.

The men spinning these ornamental mammoths never rest. I see one grab hold of the side in an exhausted stupor, while another lets out a scream as though possessed. 

One man stands on top of a float and tosses what looks like brightly colored mochi into the crowd. People are going crazy, waving their arms and shouting for his attention. This must be some delicious mochi. One is thrown my way as an elderly woman knocks me out of the way, effortlessly seizing it between her hands. It's not mochi - but a bright yellow towel. Oh dear, I exclaim, as I have a disturbing flashback to a Pittsburgh Steelers game.

At the gates of Tsushima shrine, the taiko drums and chanchiki have reached a new stage of intensity. I watch as a laughing teenage boy steps forward to seize a bachi and take the helm of a taiko drum. His face transforms into stony-faced attention as he skillfully pounds away and feeds the hungry participants.

By 16:00, I'm starting to feel a bit weary, but the musicians and kajikata aren't showing signs of slowing.  A man hangs from the float, clanging a chanchiki close to my hear, as I try to spot the closest bathroom. It's clear, Tsushima Matsuri is way more punk rock than tourist attraction.

The karakuri ningyo performances will take place inside of Tsushima Jinju. The shrine's main tenant is the deity of pestilence and blessings, Gozutenno; however, it also houses over 100 smaller deities throughout the sanctuary. The bright red torii provides a breathtaking backdrop, as each dashi moves center-shrine one-at-a-time to offer its show to the jinju's spiritual dwellers. Similar to the set-up at the train station, the audience watches the karakuri ningyo from about fifty yards away.

Each dashi has a puppet that stands on the lower tier and waves a shinto gohei prior to the performance. The floats have remarkable details. The roof on one dashi ascends from a trap door, magically revealing the top tier's karakuri ningyo .

In one show, a woman dances across the stage as her face transforms into a orangutan, back into a woman, and then a orangutan again for good measure.

One of my favorite performances was created by Tamaya Shobei V in 1887. Two puppets stand upstage as another moves center and transforms into a boat. Like a Toy Theater show, two-dimensional waves extend from the bottom of the stage and rock back and forth as the boat's miniature sail flaps in the wind.

In one karakuri ningyo performance, an entertainer cheers up a despondent emperor with... a karakuri ningyo performance. 

In the final karakuri ningyo act, a shinto priestess, or miko, approaches a cauldron that sits on the end of an overhanging eight foot rail. This is one of the first dashi I've seen with an external track, or toi, that lets the puppets move outside of the float. It's incredibly effective, as the miko waves a palm branch towards the audience in a cleansing ritual. At the end of her ceremony, paper flies out of the cauldron in a magical burst. But as I watch the confetti fall to the empty ground below, there's a part of me that wants to be closer.

During the thirteen performances, my thoughts drift to American politics, ice cream, and health insurance. I watch Tsushima's calligrapher puppet and compare it to the one last night in Toda (not nearly as impressive). I start to shape a to-do list for the upcoming week when I realize my problem - the physical distance between me and the floats have made it easier to take up residence in my own head. I remind myself to be present. Most of the karakuri ningyo are marvelous, and I feel lucky to have attended. But it's worth noting its the first time I've felt like spectator instead of a participant. 

What I usually love about karakuri ningyo and Japan's matsuri culture is the blurring between audience and performance. The theaters physically move through the crowds and travel through narrow streets. They're indifferent to where you stand, and don't mind if you gawk a few feet away at their ornamental beauty. As the oyahashi and kajikata spill past, you're impelled to follow behind.

It's never felt like these towns are hosting the matsuri; the matsuri hosts the city. This ambivalence towards an audience and simultaneous invitation to join-in gives the viewer no choice but to participate. When you're standing inside of a crowd, chasing after a roaming theater, watching mechanical puppets perform magic tricks while the person next to you gasps with delight, it's easy to forget about the stuff inside your head. You're invited to the party.

Yokosuka Matsuri

Fried food might not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of the Shinto religion, but today the smell of yakitori, halumaki (spring rolls), and tempura permeate Yokosuka's Atago Shrine.

A large line forms at the entrance, as two local news reporters enthusiastically wave to the festival goers. Broadcasting live from Owari Yokosuka Matsuri, they call me over to hear my opinion about this year's festival. Growing nervous in all my excitement, I choke out, "Wakarimasen [I dont know].  Wakarimasen [I dont know], ” as I notice the large monitor broadcasting the channel’s feed overhead.  

There’s such little information about this tradition in the West, it's surreal to see these puppets transmitted on live network television. In Japan, people know these wind-up dolls well, and surrounded by camera crews and a thousand festival goers, these puppets  continue to play a major role in Japanese life.

We travel from Atago shrine through the narrow streets of Yokosuka, where vendors fill the path selling grilled squid, toys, and the chance to win stuffed Anpanman by knocking over empty aluminum cans.

As the crowd grows larger, our guide, Mr. Jino, leads us to a small tent near the city center for a quick respite. We are treated to cold beer, sushi, and one of Yokosuka's specialties: boiled peanuts.

City officials wildly gesture over trays of octopus as the conversation grows more rambunctious - and not just because of the flowing Asahi. In November the city finds out if Aichi Prefecture's dashi tradition will be granted Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO [United Nations' Educational Scientific Cultural Organization]. It's on everyone's mind: in one month these floats might join the honorable ranks of Bunraku, Kabuki, and Noh Theater.

Well fed and rested, Yasuko-san and I are ready to head back into the crowd and watch the first performance.

An enormous audience gathers at a narrow intersection, as the musical ensemble, ohayashi, plays from the float's bottom tier. Although it's one the first days of fall, the humidity is ruthless. The tight cluster of spectators doesn't make it any cooler as a PA system amplifies the sound of the flutes, shamisen, and taiko drums. In Tahara, the puppets and musicians performed together, but here in Yokosuka, the first twenty minutes belong solely to the ohayashi.

I can't say for sure if the crowd is enjoying the music. All around me, audience members stare upwards, hands shielding their eyes from the sun, waiting for the karakuri ningyo. The ohayashi have rehearsed every day for three months, Mr. Jino beams, as the woman next to me fiddles with her camera. 

These twenty minute concert introductions to each short-lived karakuri show help emphasize the role of tradition and ritual as an essential part of the celebration. Even in the sun, with hundreds of sweaty people standing shoulder to sweaty shoulder, there aren’t any short cuts. The ohayashi play on.  

In the West, our attention is always being fought for. It’s odd to attend a performance where this isn't the case. I keep half-expecting the shamisen to start plucking out Don't Stop Believing as someone grabs a microphone, jumps on the dashi, and shouts:

"You all ready for some karakuri ningyo?! I said, Are. You. All Ready. For Some. 

KARAKURI NINGYO!!!!"

Instead, an intercom announces the family name of each musician as the karakuri ningyo puppets slowly take their place. In the first performance, a young boy hoovers above a large ceramic kettle and, expectedly, falls inside. The pot's creator must rescue the boy by destroying his own creation. The cauldron splits open, the boy emerges, and the crowd cheers.

At the end of the show, a three foot mechanical shrine attendant, or miko, appears on the float holding two white gohei. The miko performs a purification ritual, swinging the gohei towards the horizon. The puppeteers emerge from below and mimic the robotic priest, throwing white confetti across the sky as the dashi rocks back and forth on its rear wheels. 

The young men who pull the dashi, or kajikata, shout in unison as they rotate the 5 ton dashi 360 degrees. This is the crowd's favorite moment; they cheer ecstatically as the street vibrates with the beat of the taiko drum, and confetti falls in an endless paper-white firework. As the dashi heads directly towards the onlookers, the crowd parts on its own volition, and the theater rolls right through the audience. 

On top of the float, above the countless golden details and wood trim etched with dragons and wide-eyed tigers, the puppeteers raise the sashigane above their heads, joyous and victorious. Half the spectators follow behind, while the others turn around to prepare for the next dashi's entrance.

Yasuko-san preps her camera. One of her favorite karakuri ningyo is about to perform. It's a sanbaso puppet, wearing a golden hat stamped with a blue moon. Without warning, the puppet nods his head and starts his remarkable transformation. His limbs turn and twist in unexpected directions, transforming into a miniature Atago shrine before turning back into Sanbaso. 

The puppeteers emerge. The five young girls help each to the top platform and wave to the audience surrounded by falling white confetti. Yasuko-san and I both look at Mr. Jino bewildered.

In most districts it is forbidden for women to enter the dashi's puppeteer platform, let alone manipulate karakuri ningyo. However, Mr. Jino explains that given Japan's declining population rate, particularly in more rural areas, the city has invited females into the tradition for the first time in half a century. According to Mr. Jino, there are only three female karakuri ningyo troupes in all of Japan.

The final puppet performance this afternoon is a world premiere. Last year, Owari Yokosuka Matsuri commissioned the leading karakuri ningyo maker, Tamaya Shobei IX, to recreate a traditional scene. The robotic doll will string and shoot a miniature bow and arrow at a target a few feet away. The audience stands poised, iPads in the air for the upcoming feat. The archer puppet is approached by his assistant, who holds a collection of arrows in a quiver. The archer removes an arrow, places it in his bow, and pulls back. The crowd grows quiet as the mechanical doll releases the arrow and it hits the red target. While this seems like more than enough to delight the wide-eyed onlookers, the target opens like a music box, and a tiny puppet glides out on a track. His head nods to left to to right, greeting his human visitors. With a delightful grin, the tiny puppet plays the cymbals towards each side of the dashi. When his ritual is complete, he returns to his small home, the door closing behind him.

This is my favorite moment from the dashi performances. It was unexpected, bizarre, and a great example of karakuri ningyo's mechanical magic.

As the sun sets, participants start to adorn the dashi with hundreds of beautiful Japanese lanterns. There's not a single electric candle in-sight as one man lights a wick and then passes it to a woman who delicately expands a paper lantern. A third person carries the flickering lantern to the dashi, where a teenager carefully hangs it from the float.

Although ritual is prominent in every aspect of Owari Yokosuka Matsuri, it continues to pulsate with fresh new life. The sound of the ohayashi still echoes in my head as the candlelight illuminates the float's golden trim and the painted eyes of the cypress carved dragons appear to glow.

Preparing for Ota Festival

I climb the steps to the second floor of the town home in Yokosuka. The young puppeteer gestures towards an aluminum door adjacent to a small tatami room holding a dozen festival organizers. I open the aluminum door, and teeter over a 16 foot drop into a vacant garage. My stomach flips as I survey the drop. Soon enough I realize that this is the doorway to the top of the district’s 6 meter festival dashi; but today’s ornamental float sits in in the front yard, surrounded teenaged boys sipping ice coffee as they greet passersby. 

The puppeteer zips across the 4 x 6 mesh floor with ease, locating two large wooden crates. It's the perfect place to show off the Ota Festival Preservation Society's karakuri ningyo. Crouched inside the suspended platform, my mentor and guide, Ms. Yasuko Senda, and I explore the puppet's mechanisms and movements. The puppeteer sets the three-foot mechanical actor on the ground and gestures for us to take photographs. Yasuko-san translates:

"We used to keep this secret. But not so much anymore," he expresses with a shrug.

I notice a similar sentiment later in the day. While at rehearsal for another district's karakuri ningyo performance, Yasuko-san and I gather in a tiny rehearsal room, as puppeteers nonchalantly illustrate the karakuri ningyo's once-mysterious mechanisms.

Unlike Tahara Matsuri, where the puppets are operated by strings, these characters are manipulated through handcrafted rods, or sashigane, adorned in multi-sized hooks and sleeves. The sashigane moves in and out of the karakuri ningyo during performances, releasing or igniting the puppet's internal mechanisms. The sashigane works together with the dashi's internal framework to create these karakuri ningyo's magical robotic feats.

But knowing the secrets is inconsequential. The amount of precision, practice, and complexity I observe only further fuels my fascination.

You hook that where? And rotate it here? While guiding that? 

If anything, it appears even more impossible. In translation, the sashigane is frequently mixed-up with the English word weapon. It's quickly corrected to “rod." But rod doesn't give the tool justice. Weapon works - the shashigane is wielded with careful deliberation and power.

Back at the garage, the puppeteer's younger brothers, cousins, and friends stand around the towering float, laughing and doing their best American accents. Eight of us practice lifting the 5 ton dashi. Specific positions are called out by the group's director, and the young men move in and out of the dashi arms in synchronized efficiency, balancing the 18th century float atop our shoulders. The act of pulling the dashi is an art in itself. It requires rehearsals, dedication, and superb calf muscles.

"And this is without the musicians and team of puppeteers on board," I think, red-faced and out of breath. My mind travels to Tahara Matsuri, where a cooler of sake and cold beer followed the dashis like a golf caddy through the city streets. I hope this group has the same amenities, but I can't bet on it. It's clear Ota Festival is very different than Tahara Matsuri.

For one, the dashi looks surprisingly distinct. Built in 1826, hand-chiseled dragons in cypress wrap around the float, framing the tiers in ornamental grandeur. On the second tier, a miniature proscenium protrudes like a majestic memorial. The dashi is a temple on wheels.

In the puppeteer's cabin, a large wooden track, or toi, helps guide the karakuri ningyo puppets up and down the dashi stage. The toi can also slide across the width of the dashi, moving the puppet left to right with graceful deliberation.

Unlike Tahara, where a ladder carried me up to the second tier, climbing up Ota's dashi isn't easy. My hips lodge in-between the cypress supports as I hopelessly pull myself through the unforgiving wooden beams. The puppeteers look around nervously, unsure if they made the right decision allowing me join their rehearsal. At the top, I grip the sides tightly and let out a whimper as the float is tilted into the air and the puppeteers next to me try to recall the English phrase "scaredy cat".

The puppeteers carry the tradition in their blood. Their fathers and uncles used to ride the same dashi, skillfully manipulating sashigane from puppet to puppet. Today, the youngest puppeteer is thirteen and the oldest twenty-five. Despite their youth, they take the job seriously. As I clumsily put my shoes back on and fumble with my camera, they cluster around the majestic dashi, shouting, laughing, and calling out to their friends with an envious natural hipness. I walk away from the waving teens in disbelief: in this town, it's cool to be a puppeteer.

Tahara Matsuri

Tahara City sits at the head of Japan's Atsumi Peninsula. A two hour train ride from Nagoya Station, the city welcomes visitors with a landscape speckled with convenience stores, melon farms, and solar panels. On a typical Friday morning, traffic inches across Tahara Bay towards the second-largest Toyota manufacturing plant in Japan, as surfers head to the coast to tackle some of the most thrilling waves in the Pacific. 

However, this weekend is different. This weekend, all roads lead to the Tahara Matsuri, one of the last major summer festival in Aichi prefecture. 

Japanese festivals are distinguished by dashi, the multi-tiered floats that travel through city streets. Appearing as joyous thrones, these dashi sway above crowds of onlookers, marking the start of the weekend's festivities. Inside, musicians sit tightly packed with their instruments on the first floor, while mechanical puppets move six meters above their heads. These automated puppets, known as karakuri ningyo or "mechanical dolls," are what brings me to Tahara.

During the first quarter of the Edo Period, wooden robots carried tea across tatami floors to their masters, mechanical frogs hopped across late-night pubs with shots of sake on their backs, and festival floats were adorned with deities that transformed into dragons, orangutans, and magical carps. 

As far back as 1662, visitors to Takeda Omi's Karakuri Theater took delight in live entertainment absent of actors, dancers, or any type human flesh at all, for that matter. For over 100 years, the theater produced original plays cast entirely of mechanical actors. 

Four hundred years since these mechanical puppets first appeared on matsuri floats, they still delight thousands across Japan, performing in over 60 annual festivals. Even in permanent theaters, karakuri ningyo remains a popular attraction as robot ensembles continue to perform on rotation at the Kiryu City's Karakuri Puppet Theater and the Chiran Waterwheel Theater. The magic of these automated thespians is timeless, and their influence on Japanese culture is unmistakable. Just take a stroll down the bustling streets of Tokyo's Shibuya district, where crowds of tourists line up every night to watch a two hour dinner theater extravaganza with performing robots. 

For most of the year, each dashi hibernates in a city-sponsored garage. On the morning of the festival, the floats are released, and pulled by teams of men, teenagers, and children through the city of Tahara.

This afternoon, the three dashi converge at the festival center around 13:00, as the musicians, puppeteers, and audience prepare for the show.

Each performance is five to seven minutes long and captures a particular Japanese legend. The performances end with a cathartic transformation: a fish appears at the end of a pole, an empress is transformed into a dragon, a shinto priest releases white confetti from his wooden gohei.  

Each float has four puppeteers, with two puppeteers operating each karakuri ningyo within the secret deck. Inside, it feels like a club-house, with a few pillows and the smell of Japanese cypress. Only men are allowed up.

Following the performance, the dashi are exhibited in the festival hall, and greet the visitors from surrounding towns who have traveled to Tahara for the celebration.

I thought this was the end of the dashi. However, following the karakuri ningyo performance, music echoed down the narrow streets of Tahara. Behind the local elementary school, I saw the colorful tops of more dashi, starting and stopping, traveling in every direction.  Walking through Tahara's neighborhoods, I discovered teenagers adorned in body paint and colorful clothing pulling the floats.

On the bottom tier, young girls filled the dashi. With makeup and kimonos perfectly adorned, each girl climbs from the pit onto the stage. The audience participates, tossing coins and candy in the air.

These performances stem from weeks of preparation, and serve as a rite of passage for the participants. After the performance, the dashi continues to the next house, where it stops, and another girl steps up to perform.

In between the performances, teenage boys jump on the stage, and karaoke to J-Pop, often in zany hand-made costumes. 

At night, these traveling stages multiply once more, as Tahara's main street is transformed into a wild community performance, a sort of talent show performed at the exact same time as another talent show only 10 yards away, performed next to another talent show only 10 yards away, performed next to another talent show only 10 yards away...

Each stage has its own aesthetic style, some with multiple tiers, where technicians operate music from boomboxes, rotate makeshift disco balls and wave pulsing strobe lights. Many of these dashi have gas-powered flames, a wholly exciting flourish when accompanied by eight teenagers hanging off the sides, dancing and singing along with Japanese pop.

While I came to Tahara to experience the karakuri ningyo, its the dashi that left me with a lasting impression. The festival reframes many Western concepts of a stage, and transforms it into something that is ubiquitous, sacred, and accessible all at once. The design of these floats draws from the style of the traditional karakuri ningyo dashi seen earlier in the day; however, that traditional appearance is invigorated with the makeshift charm of christmas lights, kitsch, found objects, and untamed dancing. 

On the final day of the festival, hunabi is the word. Community members clasp enormous smoking fireworks as offerings at the local shinto shrine. In the evening, an unbelievable firework display lights up the night sky for over two hours. Chocolate bananas are served under tents and the McDonalds has a line out the door.

The community of Tahara is excited to share their history with visitors. They are also thrilled to show off an amazing eco-friendly electrical grid. Solar panels and wind mills dot the landscape, hugged by the Atsumi Bay and Pacific Ocean. At the top of the Mt. Zao, a giant turbine reminds visitors that almost 30 percent of the homes in Tahara are powered by renewable energy.

The observatory on Mt. Zao has a glow-in-the-dark celestial path that leads up to a sleek yogurt shop. It's the perfect place to enjoy the fireworks and watch Tahara's matsuri traditions as summer loosens its grip on the region.