Lists of “great festivals,” the boisterous shrine affairs centering upon god-seats, always come in threes. The Kanda festival and the Sannō festival in Akasaka, to the southwest of the palace, are to be found on most Edo and Meiji lists of the big three.
The Sannō festival has fared badly in this century. Certainly it was among the great festivals of Edo, accorded condescending notice by Lord Tokugawa himself. The Sannō was the shrine to which baby Tokugawas were taken to be presented to the company of gods. It seemed to lose vigor as Tameike Pond, above which the shrine stood, silted in and was developed. Akasaka became a wealthy residential district and a place of chic entertainment, much patronized by the bureaucracy. The affluent bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy do not have much truck with shrine festivals, affairs of the Low City and the lower classes.
The Kanda festival had a troubled time in Meiji, for curious reasons, telling of conservatism and traditionalism. Two gods had in theory been worshipped at the Kanda Shrine. One of them was a proper mythological deity whose name scarcely anyone knew. The other was Taira Masakado, a tenth-century general who led a rebellion in the Kantō region. Unlike most Japanese rebels, he attempted to set himself up as emperor; the usual way has been to take the power but not the position. In 1874 the shrine priesthood, in somewhat sycophantic deference to the emperor cult of the new day, petitioned the governor to have Masakado removed, and another proper mythological entity brought from the Kashima Shrine in Ibaragi Prefecture. The festival languished. The demotion of Masakado, for whom a secondary shrine was presently built, is thought to have been responsible—this despite the fact that the arrival of the new deity, the other proper one, was boisterous. Resentment does seem to have been strong. Everyone had thought of the Kanda Shrine as belonging to Masakado, and he had a devoted following in his own East Country, whose inhabitants had for centuries been victims of Kyoto snobbishness. By 1884 old divisions and resentments were thought to have sufficiently healed that a good old-fashioned festival might be held. It was, and there was a typhoon on the second day, which the newspapers attributed to Masakado’s anger. The press was frivolous, but one reads serious intent behind it. The Kanda festival never quite came into its own again.
If some observances disappeared in Meiji, others emerged into prominence, some quite new, some revivals, some revisions of the old. New Year celebrations culminated in a military parade, something new, and a review of the fire brigades, something old given a new turn. The latter had been banned for a time as dangerous. The danger was to the firemen who, dressed in traditional uniforms, did daring things high upon ladders. The old brigades were losing their practical significance, although it was not completely gone until after the earthquake. The New Year review was becoming show and no more, albeit exciting show, and aesthetically pleasing as well. It has survived, and seems in no danger now of disappearing.
Observances now so much a part of the landscape that they seem as venerable as the landscape itself frequently turn out to be no older than Meiji. The practice of taking small children to Shinto shrines in mid-November is an instance. Its origins are very old indeed, for it grew from the primitive custom of taking infants to a shrine at a certain age to confirm that a precarious bit of life had taken hold. It had been mainly an upper-class ritual in Edo, and did not begin to gain popularity in the Low City until mid-Meiji. The flying carp of Boys’ Day must unfortunately be associated with militarism. They came into great vogue from about the time of the Sino-Japanese War. Boys’ Day, May 5, is now Children’s Day, and the first day of summer by the old reckoning. Girls’ Day, March 3, is not a holiday.
Some of the god-seat festivals were very famous and drew great crowds, but they were essentially local affairs, gatherings of the clan (the word ujiko, “member of the congregation,” has that literal significance) to honor its Shinto god. There were other Shinto festivals of a more generally animistic nature, affairs for the whole city. The two biggest occurred in the summer, in the Sixth Month under the old calendar, transferred to July under the new. Both honored and propitiated the gods of nature, Mount Fuji in the one case and the Sumida River in the other, upon the commencement of the busy summer season, when both would be popular and a great deal would be asked of them.
The Sumida and Fuji were not the only river and mountain that had their summer “openings,” but they were the most famous and popular. Besides honoring animistic deities, the observances had practical significance. The opening of the Sumida meant the beginning of the hot weather, and of the pleasures associated with seeking coolness upon the waters. The opening of Fuji, or any other mountain, was the signal for the summer crowds, less of a religious and more of a hedonistic bent as time went on, to start climbing. It was not considered safe earlier in the season, because of slides and storms. Both openings are still observed, the Fuji one now at the end of June, the Sumida one at a shifting date in July. Boating upon the Sumida is not the pleasure it once was, of course. The throngs upon Fuji are ever huger.
In the Edo and early Meiji periods there was a strongly religious element in an ascent of Fuji. The mountain cult was important from late Edo. The opening of the mountain was and is observed at several Fuji shrines through the city. Some may be recognized by artificial hillocks meant to be small likenesses of Fuji. Believers could with merit ascend one of them if an ascent of the real mountain was impractical.
The most popular of the Fuji shrines is just north of Asakusa, to the east of the Yoshiwara. Several days in early summer (a single day is not incentive enough for moving the giant trees and rocks that are offered for sale) there are garden fairs north of Asakusa, and great crowds.
The Sumida had always had a special significance for the city. All the wards of the Low City but one either bordered it or fell but a few paces short of it, and the elegant pleasures of Edo could scarcely have done without it. The summer opening, at Ryōgoku Bridge, was a time of boats and splendid crowds and fireworks. Purveyed by two venerable and famous makers, each of which had its claque, they were of two kinds, stationary displays near water level, and rockets. General Grant joined the crowds in 1879. E. S. Morse was there earlier, and described what he saw with delight:
At the river the sight was entrancing, the wide river as far as the eye could reach being thickly covered with boats and pleasure barges of all descriptions. We had permission to pass through the grounds of a daimyo, and his servants brought chairs to the edge of the river for our accommodation. After sitting for a few minutes we concluded to see the sights nearer, and at that moment a boat came slowly along the bank, the man soliciting patronage. We got aboard and were sculled into the midst of the crowds. It would be difficult to imagine a stranger scene than the one presented to us; hundreds of boats of all sizes—great, square-bottomed boats; fine barges, many with awnings and canopies, all illuminated with bright-colored lanterns fringing the edge of the awnings… It was a startling sight when we got near the place to see that the fireworks were being discharged from a large boat by a dozen naked men, firing off Roman candles and set pieces of a complex nature. It was a sight never to be forgotten: the men’s bodies glistening in the light with the showers of sparks dropping like rain upon them, and, looking back, the swarms of boats, undulating up and down, illuminated by the brilliancy of the display; the new moon gradually setting, the stars shining with unusual brightness, the river dark, though reflecting the ten thousand lantern lights of all sizes and colors, and broken into rivulets by the oscillations of the boats.
Clara Whitney went too, and had mixed feelings:
The Sumida stretched out before us, and for nearly a mile up and down it was covered by myriads of boats, from the clumsy canal boat to the gay little gondola dancing like a cockle shell on the tiny wavelets… Millions of lanterns covered the river as far as we could see until the sober Sumida looked like a sea of sparkling light… It was altogether a very pretty sight—the brilliantly lighted houses, the illuminated river, the gay fireworks, and crowds of lanterns held aloft to prevent their being extinguished… Like a stream of humanity they passed our perch and Mama and I spoke with sadness of their lost and hopeless condition spiritually.
There were, of course, changes in the festive pattern through Meiji and on into Taishō. New Year celebrations were less elaborate at the end of Meiji than at the beginning. Certain customs quite disappeared, such as the use