Day 15 - The History Of The Nebuta Festival In Aomori - Hot Springs Walking Tour Of Northern Japan
Day 15 - The History Of The Nebuta Festival In Aomori - Hot Springs Walking Tour Of Northern Japan
Today we scheduled a rest and sightseeing day in Aomori, as we prepare to enter Japan’s mountainous areas with longer walking days, steeper elevations and cooler temperatures.
I was feeling some muscle soreness, so it would do me good to have a rest day.
Over the last two days while we were staying in Goshogawara, we have already completed the walk to Aomori, so today we took the morning bus to Aomori, locked our backpacks int a storage locker at the station, and went across the street to sit at the Starbucks.
It was a relaxed morning, and nice to catch up on emails and arrange photos, without having to worry about the need to hurry up to complete the day’s walk before the sun sets.
We have stayed in Aomori before, about 15 years ago.
We came here to see the Nebuta Festival floats, and to see some ancient Buddhist temples.
We came by train and did not walk then.
I wanted to see the current Nebuta festival floats, as they display new floats every year.
The Nebuta Festival (Nebuta Matsuri) is one of Japan’s most spectacular summer festivals, held every August in Aomori City.
It is famous for its giant illuminated paper floats, energetic dancers, and taiko drums.
The Nebuta Festival originated in the 8th century, when it evolved locally from the Tanabata, a traditional Japanese star festival that originally came from China in the 8th century.
When Tanabata reached Japan, it merged with local customs celebrating the spirits of ancestors and purifying oneself for the new agricultural season.
One early influence was a local Shinto ritual called “Nemuri Nagashi” — meaning “washing away sleepiness.”
Villagers would float lanterns or paper dolls down rivers or the by the seashore to cleanse away evil spirits and drowsiness before the busy farming season began.
The word “Nebuta” is thought to come from “nemuri” (sleepiness) — literally meaning “to drive away sleep,” or to Awaken.
During the Edo period (1603–1868), Aomori was a prosperous port town.
The Nemuri Nagashi ritual evolved into a summer parade, and people began carrying paper lanterns shaped like human figures, samurai, or mythological beings.
These early lanterns were illuminated from within by candles.
People started competitions, striving to make bigger and more elaborate lanterns each year.
The parades became livelier, with drummers, flutists, and dancers joining in.
In the Meiji era (1868–1912), The Nebuta festival expanded as Aomori modernized.
The lanterns became more elaborate by the use of better materials and technology.
The lanterns grew in size, reaching several meters tall.
The frames of the floats were made with bamboo and wire, and covered with hand-painted washi paper.
In the 20th century, electric lights replaced the candles, allowing for larger, safer, and more colorful floats.
During World War II, the festival was temporarily suspended for safety reasons.
After the war, it was revived and quickly regained its popularity, symbolizing community spirit and local hope in recovery from the postwar depression that ,gripped Japan.
Today, the Aomori Nebuta Festival is held every August in Aomori City.
Each year there are about 20 large floats, some up to 9 meters wide and 5 meters high.
Each float (Nebuta) depicts heroes from Japanese legends, kabuki, or mythology — meticulously designed by Nebuta masters who spend months creating them.
The festival gets over 3 million visitors each year, including many international tourists.
Each year’s floats are displayed in a museum in Aomori.
There are similar festivals taking place nearby, in other parts of Aomori Prefecture.
The Hirosaki Neputa Matsuri – features fan-shaped floats (Neputa) and a calmer atmosphere.
The town of Goshogawara has the Tachineputa – known for its towering 20-meter-high floats.
We visited the Nebuta Museum, and admired the display of the Nebuta floats.
The floats are fantastic art objects, combining great design and a high level of craftsmanship, construction and painting.
Next door to the museum is a warehouse and concept shop, selling all sorts of apple related products. Aomori is celebrated for its apples.
I bought for us different kinds of dried apples, which we’re going to use as snacks while we are climbing in the mountains during the next couple of weeks.
There is also an apple cider brewery inside the warehouse, and two casual restaurants.
We ate a late afternoon lunch at one of the restaurants that specializes in burgers.
We ate a fish burger topped with roasted apple and avocado.
The lunch was very tasty!
We walked along the boardwalk by the sea and the port, before we claimed our backpacks at the station.
Before we walked to our hotel to check in, we bought some boiled corn and fresh apples to eat for dinner in our room.
Because we had eaten such a late lunch, there was no chance that we would be hungry by dinner time.
Outside of the train station area by the sea, which is also where the Nebuta museum is located, the apple products store, the bus station and the Lovina Mall, the rest of downtown Aomori felt pretty run down and deserted.
Just a few blocks beyond the port area, the shops were all closed or out of business, and the streets were deserted.
I see so many fragile old people in the streets, walking bent down and broken by age.
Overseas, Japan has a reputation of having so many centenarians, and people look to Japan to learn their ways and uncover their secrets of healthy long lives.
The secret is not in Japan.
It is also not in food, nor in abstinence from food, coffee, sugar, or alcohol.
The secret, which many Japanese people do not know, is in cultivation of a new and more enlightened inner environment.
Allow me to explain how people get old.
Somewhere in the collective consciousness, there is a lie that you are a mortal being, not an immortal being.
You accepted the societal programming that you must grow up, become old, and then die.
So because you accepted that thought, you began to degrade the life force within your body.
Any thought of aging and beliefs in the inevitability of death sends a slow or low frequency electrical spark to each cell that makes up your cellular structure.
These low frequency lies that you keep telling yourself settle into your intelligent cells, who always “listen” to your commands.
The slower the rate of speed, the greater the loss of agility within the body, for the body is lessened in its ability to rejuvenate and restore itself.
By wrong thinking and thoughts of aging being an inevitable “fact”, ageing is permitted to occur and ultimately it brings about
the death of the body.
Yet, if you allowed yourself to continuously receive higher thought frequencies, you would send faster and more high-powered electrical currents throughout your body, and it would stay forever in the moment, thus never advancing in age or dying.
But everyone here believes, and therefore “knows,” that the body will age and die, so slowly the current, the life force, becomes less and less vital.
Our hotel was the nicest I could find in Aomori, and they did decorate the interior with Nebuta festival floats, but it feels like a regular Japanese business hotel, with small rooms and smaller bathrooms.
It will be OK, though, especially since we are on the 11th floor, so we get a nice view of town and the Sea of Japan.
Sending you love and light,
Tali
Walked today - 5 km.
Total walked to date - 232 km.
