Backs straight
Rabbit’s gait
Mochi, kelp
Crows won’t help
Caw one, start
Caw two, stop
Caw three, Caw four
Murder of crows at the door
Well, I was thinking as I half dozed on my bed in the afternoon sunlight, half-believing I could still smell the faint odour of kelp silage [a smell which reminded me vaguely of a Weet-bix factory I often went past years ago] that chant, though I only heard it once, does stick.
Kyushu as you may know is famous for its Train Surfing Festival but that is held at a different time of year from when I went there. Though I missed it, the trip to Kyushu which included going to the Kelp and Moon Pulling Festival, seeing some weddings near the kelp beds, watching pole-hanging, and eating at one of the new post-coronavirus restaurants, was really very worthwhile.
Let me tell you about it.
I’d heard that the Kelp and Moon Pulling Festival time - or strictly speaking the few days before the Festival - is a time for weddings so arriving just before the festival I took the opportunity to see some.
The weddings are held when the salmon and white of the sushi sky, which only occurs at this time of the year, casts a romantically soft glow over Kyushu. Some think that the smell of kelp silage which is very strong at this time is particularly auspicious. The stronger the better. In fact some people prefer it to be almost overpowering.
Most couples nowadays hold at least part of the ceremony on a beach where kelp is grown and processed so off to a beach I went.
On the way to the beach I briefly visited some shrines where people prayed for straight backs or gave thanks for having straight backs. They were burning incense as they passed through different areas of the shrines, hands clasping the incense and then placing it in a nearby urn.
I also visited an art gallery where they had prepared a kelp and moon-viewing exhibition. Some of the exhibits looked back at how the events had been celebrated historically, while others had a more contemporary focus, including one exhibition featuring art teachers' reflections on their teaching practice as it related to either spine straightening, moon pulling or both.
To get to the beach required crossing several streets. Waiting with other - mostly Japanese - people standing well back from the intersection, occasionally looking at the sushi sky, some reading books or scanning their phones but all really just, waiting, waiting for the lights to change. Oh how much longer? Until the crow caws is the common saying. At none of the crossing did I hear a crow caw but eventually the lights changed.
Not all crossings had street signs and there were few clues to say I was heading, or not heading, in the right direction. I hoped to come across something - perhaps a murder of crows cawing (unlikely as that normally only occurs at night but one can hope) - to confirm I was heading in the right direction.
My hopes rose when I saw a sign with arrows. It had one arrow pointing up and another pointing to the left. In the middle of the sign were the words, “you are here” but there was nothing that told me what the arrows were pointing to. Zen, I thought. I continued in the way I thought was right. No crows cawed.
I eventually did find the beach and was able to watch several weddings.
This beach like all wedding beaches had oak trees nearby in which crows perch. It is thought to be particularly propitious if the sound of at least one crow cawing is heard before the couple enters the water. There were thus some delays in proceedings as people looked for crows and tried to encourage at least one crow to caw.
Once they heard a crow caw [yes, one cawed], the ceremony commenced. It began with an offering of dried kelp bladders made to the crows at a small shrine made from kelp racks. After this, the couple who were to marry, while beating old crows' nests together, carried grafted kelp roots on their backs down to the beach.
As I watched, fully clothed and assisted by one of the kelp-bed divers, the groom in white, the bride in orange - the colours of the sushi clouds - entered the water and covered their bodies with kelp. They then swam to an area where there were no kelp beds. On arrival they dropped the weighted kelp roots, hoping that a new kelp bed would be established at that spot.
That dropping signified their marriage and at that point they also exchanged rings. A kelp diver’s boat then came by and the couple were lifted in. Once in the boat they waved and sang to the rest of the wedding party on the beach, who, with families of kelp growers all in traditional costumes played taiko drums, danced a dance similar to bon odori and feasted on oysters, mushrooms [which the area of Kyushu was famous for], kelp silage and kelp wine.
The bride or groom accompanied their singing and waving with the blowing of dried kelp bladders. It is thought that the highly pitched tune can be heard by whales several kilometres away.
On their return to the shore the couple took a few leaves or air bladders of kelp. These they would later air-dry and store in their bedroom. This, they believe, would ensure the health of the new kelp beds and their own children.
Sometimes on these occasions, the singing of a blue whale is heard in the background - perhaps attracted by the sounds of the kelp bladders - and hearing it is considered a particularly good omen. The couple planting the kelp will sometimes swim to it and sing along with it. On my visit to the weddings I didn’t hear the blue whale but later on I was fortunate to hear one singing to mark the end of the Kelp and Moon Pulling Festival.
This is a new Kyushu fertility rite which began after this area of Kyushu, known to have vast beds of very high quality kelp, was selected as a major source of kelp to support the then new public health initiative - kelp eating and pole-hanging - which was aimed at reducing the incidence of spinal problems in the Japanese population.
I was told that the families living near the shoreline had been involved in cultivation, harvesting and sale of kelp for generations and that the new fertility ritual was based on some of their earlier customs. As outsiders were specifically excluded from participating, little detail of the earlier ritual is known. With the increased demand for kelp and more kelp beds being harvested, the families have turned to outsiders for help and new rituals, based on the old, have developed.
The increased consumption of, and interest in, kelp has given the farmers some additional opportunities to earn money. Assisting in weddings near the kelp beds is one; operating cafes or restaurants selling kelp-related foods is another. Some earn a little extra money by allowing the newlyweds to be photographed against their kelp-drying frames
They were getting married amongst the seaweed when the crow flew by
He said to her, or was it she said to him, I wish I like the crow could fly
But they couldn’t
Or wouldn’t
The kelp-growing families offered their help
Even though their main experience was with kelp
So in the sea they married
To the sounds of kelp bladders which carried
From them to the shore
One afternoon, at about 3:30 I went to see the “Return Of The Children”. It’s the time when the children are returned to their homes after school. Though for locals it is nothing special for visitors it’s quite the opposite. To hear that single crow caw, to see the bus arrive, a pole with a child attached, protrude from the bus and see the child then transferred to a hook on a pole and hang there for 5 to 10 minutes is really quite something.
On another day I saw "The Children’s Departure” which occurs in the morning. I heard the crow caw once when the bus was about 10 minutes away. The parents then hooked a short pole to their child’s clothing and hoisted the child up to the hook on the pole. Though many Japanese families have one or two children, some have more. It was quite a sight to see several children hanging from a pole in a bunch - like very large bunches of grapes - waiting for the bus to arrive and then being gently lifted off the pole and into the bus.
Although many parents still use the traditional lift and hook technique to hook the children, some had a cube on wheels with a spring inside. For this method the child sits on the cube with the hook in its clothing protruding above its head. The parent then presses a lever and the child is shot to a point slightly higher than the hook on the pole. As it descends the hook on the clothing attaches to the hook on the pole. That was quite awesome to watch. I was fearful that the child might under- or over-shoot but all turned out well, fortunately.
One day I noticed that parents in one of the streets had got together and dressed their children in specially coloured clothes. Though there can be many reasons for this usually it is some kind of celebration. A common one is a child’s birthday but sometimes it's for National Day. This day it was for National Day. A whole streetful of children in bright colours producing an effect like a living, moving, twisting rainbow of national colours. That day it was done well. On another day I saw it happen but it was done badly and the children looked like lumps of dun-coloured dolls wiggling in the air.
In the mornings and afternoons you can walk along the streets either following or preceding the bus, hear the crow caw and then see these rituals played out. In some streets because lots of tourists come to witness the events some entrepreneurs have opened stalls where they sell hooking paraphernalia and drinks such as kelp silage coffee or pure kelp alcohol. Safety barriers have been erected to prevent too many people from interrupting the children’s departure to, or return from, school and behind these are tables for tourists to sit at and watch the proceedings.
Children hanging on poles
Strange but not unexpected
It's good for their spines, their souls
None look scared, all unaffected
Children swinging, crows cawing
A real Kyushu scene not a drawing
Though the hooking and de-hooking of the children are commonplace events and thus not much discussed by locals there is quite a wide range of literature and other creative works inspired by it — films, plays, TV shows. One famous children' s book is My child the hooker and there is a noted rock concert named We got the children hooked. All well worth watching or reading.
As a public health initiative, pole hanging was simple to introduce as it merely involves hanging on a pole for about 10 minutes. All that is required is a pole, a hook on the pole and a hook on clothing and of course some means to lift the body to hanging height. People hang for about 10 minutes in the morning and evening though older people will often hang longer both to increase the effect and because it can be a social activity for some.
The only stricture is that the pole needs to be outside and on a street with some foot or vehicular traffic. Why that makes it effective is unclear. Some people think it's because the combination of a person hanging, and vehicles or people moving creates a sort of energy field that, if you are in it, strengthens the spine. It’s similar to the belief that the Great Pyramid of Gaza and similarly shaped objects give off a certain energy which increases the longevity of objects inside them.
Apart from the energy field theory, there is no other theory that explains why the pole needs to be outside and on a street with some foot or vehicular traffic
Pole hanging starts when children are about two years old and can continue right through adulthood but normally by the time a person is in their early teens they have usually gained the full benefit of pole-hanging. Further pole-hanging is sometimes recommended if a person has twinges and as people age. So you will often see children and older people pole-hanging but only occasionally people between say 13 and 60 years old
In Kyushu I often saw bent-backed elderly people but rarely saw a person under say 60 years of age with a bent back. There are some. These are often the children of parents who were part of an anti-spine strengthening movement. There was a belief then, and there are still some who believe it, that spine-strengthening using kelp and/or pole-hanging is unnatural. These people believed spines should be allowed to develop without interference by ingesting anything - in this case kelp - to excess or by artificial mechanical means such as pole-hanging.
They had held anti-kelp-eating protests, had destroyed beds of kelp and drying racks and even attempted to poison some of the canned kelp. In their anti-pole hanging protests, in addition to petitioning as many people and organisations of influence as they could, they held marches and rallies, had broken poles and destroyed hanging points.
Their most heinous act was to kidnap some of the children hanging on the poles. They held the children for some weeks whilst trying to get a commitment from the government to abandon the public health initiative. The kidnapping drew much condemnation, even amongst their supporters and they ultimately returned the children without achieving their aims. Soon after, the anti-spine-strengthening groups disbanded in shame.
As I half-dozed versions of a rhyme came back to me. No version seemed quite right but I couldn’t work out what it should have been.
Where old people are bent
And can’t pay their rent
They can still pick up coins
But not tenderloins
Where old backs are crook
And some people can’t lift
A coin or a book
If you get my drift
Now with pole-hanging and kelp
They don’t need more help
Where there’s lots of old people
Whose backs are all bent
Who walk down the street
Unlike an athlete
Perhaps it was all of these in some way.
One day I discovered one of the new children’s play areas which have been established to help children overcome the psychological damage of the pandemic lock-downs.
I was just passing by but someone noticed me looking and said I could go in if I wanted. From the outside it didn’t look particularly different from other play areas but inside, I discovered, it was. With some omissions or additions it was a small-scale mass inoculation centre. Here were child-size mannequin nurses holding toy syringes, child-size chairs for the children acting as patients to sit on, and a lot of toy medical equipment such as syringes, tape, bottles of hand sanitiser and a post-injection seating area. There were also books and drawing materials which of course would not have been provided during the pandemic.
I noticed some of the children playing a game made of testing strips. They were laid out on a square panel which was 8 strips wide by 8 deep with 63 strips altogether. All were negative but one.
The aim of the game was to move the positive strip to the top left hand corner of the panel. Any player who managed that was greeted by a small speaker on the panel shouting, Clear, clear. The game included a timer which could be set so that after a period of time, say five minutes, if the player had not succeeded in getting the positive strip to the top left hand corner, the machine shouted quarantine, quarantine and the game ended.
Another rather simpler game called Guess the mask involved blindfolded children picking a mask from a tub of masks and guessing whether they’d picked a 3D mask or an ordinary one, a cotton mask or a polyester one. The different masks each had a value so guessing a mask was cotton worth one point but a polyester 3D mask worth five.
In addition to these games were movement games such as Splat the virus - a game much like hop-scotch and thought to have been developed in Czechia. There were painted grids on the floor in one section. Toy viruses could be put in one or more of the rectangles and children had to jump from one area of the grid to the other while avoiding the grids with a virus.
I knew that one of the special things about this area of Japan was the post-coronavirus restaurants so one evening, feeling I wanted to eat somewhere and something unusual, I decided to go to one of them. Though trendy I found that they provide not overly expensive and yet quite substantial meals.
As I crossed roads on my way there I could see hooks on some the power poles. There were no children on these as it was dusk so the children would already be at home or in cram school. But the hooks were in use. Old ladies - and some men - hanging there with their feet a few centimetres above the ground, head torches attached but not yet turned on.
On entering the restaurant, apart from being hit by the sour smell of kelp silage mixed with the faint smell of ethanol, I heard what I thought was John Lennon’s Imagine. I paid no particular mind to it as I put on a pair of surgical gloves supplied by the restaurant and, at the ordering machine, chose my meal. I gave the card with the details of my order to one of the be-gloved, face-mask-wearing waiters who in turn gave it to the cook.
I then had a few moments to really hear the tune. Yes it was Imagine.
This was the first and only post-coronavirus restaurant I’d been to so I’m not sure how typical this restaurant was. Some features were definitely pandemic-derived. For example, the seating was spaced out like one of those mass-inoculation venues. Seats were 1.5 metres apart and the staff all wore surgical gowns and gloves. However in addition to seats, there were also tables of two, four or even six places. There were no tables in the inoculation venues.
There were plastic sheets protecting the cashier and the entrance to the kitchen and though all staff wore facemasks they only covered the chin. The cook, though also wearing a chin-covering facemask, wore no shirt.
I asked one of the waiters about this and was told wearing the mask on the chin symbolised the freedoms regained post pandemic but also acknowledged the past. The cook by exposing the upper body completely was also symbolising the regained freedoms as during the pandemic cooks and chefs, if they were able to cook, had to be completely covered.
The cooks are so dirty
They don’t wear a shirty
An old childhood chant but seemed to fit the situation perfectly
As I started to examine - admire would not be the right word - the decor I realised that Imagine was still playing. That song I knew had been published well before the pandemic so I was not sure why it was playing. I hummed along as I waited for the meal and looked around.
I noticed acrylic and plastic used in some more subtle ways. Shelves holding sound equipment, some books and a few pandemic knick-knacks had been created with acrylic sheets.
The knick-knacks in the restaurant itself included candlesticks made of syringes, and several small screens replaying old news reports on the state of the epidemic either within Japan or world-wide. Some of the wallpaper was also made from newspaper reports of the time.
The restaurant had also made use of covid testing strips (unused I hoped) by joining several together and making them into coasters and place mats.
As I waited for my meal, I was able to watch its preparation. The shirtless cook wreathed in fumes and dripping sweat was, I must admit, a little off-putting, but knowing this was part of the pandemic recover process, I chose to ignore any concerns I had about cleanliness.
I’d ordered glass noodles with spinach soup. This was not the spinach soup referred to in the vision statement of the guiding principles developed to steer the development of the world in the moment between when the world was created and before ordinary life began. It was a very special spinach soup and should more accurately have been called spinach and kelp as it was a mixture of both.
Ingredients common to all meals here were kelp stalks [or stipes] and mushrooms. The kelp stalks were taken from as old a plant as possible so most were quite hard. Added to those were some stalks taken from plants which after harvesting were made into kelp silage - becoming soft and mouldy in the process. Soups and main courses were made from these. Some restaurants, I understood, also served silage kelp ice cream.
The kelp and particularly the kelp silage gave everything a very distinctive yeasty, malty, grassy smell - a deep umami flavour unique of course to Kyushu.
One special ingredient that all post-coronavirus themed restaurants used was moat water. In this city it was obtained from the moat surrounding the very old castle. It became popular during the pandemic as people thought that imbibing a few drops of the stagnant and musty tasking water would either protect them from the virus or alleviate its effects.
The challenge, both then and now, was to get the water. The water could only safely be obtained at night but getting water from a moat at night is not particularly easy. The banks are steep and slippery and the lighting is poor. It is however much safer to obtain at night as at night most of the crows are asleep and there is little chance of being bombarded by a flock of flesh-tearing crows.
During the day the crows act as water guards and any person who is seen too close to the water is most likely to be attacked and possibly severely hemmed by crows. Some people have likened them to Australian magpies but in truth, when guarding the moat water, these are perhaps 100 times more dangerous.
I noticed Imagine had now been replaced with the traditional song Ring a ring a rosie.
On asking why these tunes, one of the waiters said that they were playing music that certain sites - such as Buzzfeed - said were most popular during the pandemic. Some of the songs were first published during the pandemic but some were older.
Buzzfeed listed about 14 songs. At this restaurant to emphasise the boredom of the pandemic they decided to play two tunes a day. One would always be Ring a ring a rosie and the other would be one of the BuzzFeed songs. Today it was John Lennon’s Imagine. Tomorrow it would be OneRepublic’s Better days. This, they felt, resonated with the unchanging atmosphere of the pandemic. Day after day was the same.
I think Ring a ring a rosie was an obvious choice even though the belief that it was about the Great Plague in Europe now is thought erroneous and I knew Better days was published during the pandemic but why Imagine? A song of hope contrasting with the black humoured Ring a ring a rosie the waiter said.
On my way back to the hotel, I passed one of the streets with hooks. The older people still pole hanging had turned on their head torches. Like large fire-flies I said to myself.
The festival was held over a long weekend but I only went on the last day.
To get to the Festival I had to walk to the train station passing by a car park that I’d not noticed before. In it were about 5 or 6 people walking a little forward, then a little backwards and occasionally going around in circles but seeming to do so without reason.
After a little while of watching it dawned on me. I’d actually been told of this phenomenon but had forgotten. These were people who had parked their cars here but could not get the self-payment parking machine to accept their money - neither cash nor digital payment. As these are self-help car parks there is nobody present to help and there is no way of contacting the car park management. They are truly self-help.
The drivers, instead of leaving their vehicle and getting to their destination by other means, just walk around aimlessly until the carpark becomes free of charge which is usually around nightfall. It seems that somehow within these carparks people’s minds stop. In a self-help culture you must help yourself. They cannot think of anything but that they are without the means to pay. They don’t even call friends or relatives, nor ask passers-by for help. For this reason the parks are colloquially referred to as Bermuda parks.
Once I reached the station I was very pleased to find that the train I was to take was the famous one-driver train - the Yellow One Man Diesel Train. It had won its category of the train surfing competition several years in a row. On the outside of the train you could see a few dings and there was even one large chunk missing where a shark had taken a bite. The interior was not too much affected. Some of the windows had been abraded by sand and there were a few bits of dried seaweed in awkward-to-clean areas.
It wasn't a particularly long trip but long enough to make me a little anxious as to whether I had the right amount of money to pay. I kept watching the screen above the driver as the quantities went up stop by stop. I found myself frequently re-checking the ticket I had taken on entering the bus just to make sure that I could match that number with the number on the screen.
On arrival I was relieved to know that I had enough money even for the return journey. I deposited the right amount in the repository and alighted from the bus. I gave the driver several chestnuts.
The Festival, I found, was a mix of spine-straightening and moon-pulling events. This is because the Festival was once two separate festivals - the Kelp Festival and the Moon Pulling Festival but as they were held at the same time and as kelp became more important, in recent years the newer Kelp Festival has been combined with the much older Moon Pulling Festival.
The various events included pole-hanging and a sort of treasure hunt for those with bent backs and moon-pulling.
In one of the pole-hanging events, children were dressed up in different coloured clothes to make a sort of rainbow of children and in another they formed a colour wheel.
The rainbow pole hanging was done using a line of poles placed along one edge of the event ground. It aimed to create waves or undulations of the different colours by raising and lowering the children at different times and different speeds. As the children moved and the speed changed the children screamed. The screams were extremely high-pitched but I found that if I listened carefully, they were actually singing a song called Song of the pandemic: beyond Wuhan and onwards across the continents and seas the virus goes and we go into lockdown. Unlike the name the song just consisted of a few words namely From Wuhan we go we go we go we go we go repeated for about 3 minutes.
As with all these events the start of the action was signalled by a single crow caw.
For the colour wheel hanging a circle of steel was installed above ground at about the normal height of the pole-hanging hooks. Nowadays, powered by the battery of an electric car, the children - wearing the colour wheel clothes - go around and around. Once they get up enough speed the colours merge to white and the children seem to disappear. This event lasts about 10 minutes with the children invisible to onlookers most of that time. The children canof course see the onlookers but because of the speed and having to be strapped to the wheel can’t wave.
There are now speed restrictions on the colour wheel event as at one time the speed of the wheel was such that the children disappeared and never came back again. To this date it is unknown where they are. It’s known historically as the Children’s White Wheel Disaster.
As with the pole hanging the children sang when on the colour wheel. It was the same song, same words and same pitch. The children who disappeared were also singing but not that song. Out of concern and respect for the parents whose children disappeared, people no longer mention the name of that song. It is said that as the children disappeared the song was heard stretched out by the doppler effect. Some people swear they can still hear it coming as if from a long distance away.
Another event involving children is, not surprisingly, the new jack-in-the-box event. This uses the cube on wheels with a spring inside. This festival event is really quite simple. It’s a competition to see how high a child can be shot into the air. The area was covered by a net and the children were shot up at a slight angle so when they commenced their descent they would fall into the net, not on the ground where the cube was placed. As with a lot of these events, the children and their parents wore traditional Japanese costumes so the spectacle of children shooting up into the air was very colourful.
At this festival there are usually events involving people of the older generation whose spines are bent. The main one this year was the Spine bent hunt.
Unable to move at a speed much beyond a slow walking pace and looking downward rather than straight ahead, these participants engaged in treasure hunts. Moving slowly, the participants walked in lanes liberally strewn with coins which people had thrown into the lanes much as one would into a wishing well. The participants picked up as many of these as possible in the 5 or 10 minutes allocated. The winner was the one with the greatest number of coins at the end of the set time.
There was also a judging of the person who, through spine-straightening, had achieved the straightest spine. Obviously this was for the older cohort of people who when young did not eat kelp and were not hung on poles.
The winner this year was a very tall thin woman; she was so tall and thin she was like a skeleton before her time. I hazarded the view that she was unhealthy but the people around me said that she’d attained what all the older people were all attempting to attain. In fact, not only was her spine extremely straight but in the process of straightening her spine she had also added several centimetres to her height, they said.
In addition to stalls selling kelp you could also buy small phials of moat water to splash on your food as you ate it. Mouldy kelp pies were particularly popular and those containing a crow egg sold at a premium. Some people took home some of the pastries but others bought containers of fresh, dried or canned kelp to eat straightaway. Some preferred the kelp stipes but most paid a little more for the kelp blades and a premium for the mouldy versions of either.
The festival was held under the yellow and white sushi sky
That’s when the sky is at its brightest, and the weather is dry
While there I rode the Yellow One Man Diesel Train
Sitting in a very comfortable seat, I sipped champagne
While some of the other passengers, backs bent or tired
Told stories of festivals where plans had backfired
Lost children on the colour wheel
Or The Errant buffaloes ordeal
Some had just been married
Some had yet to say aye
Some were waiting for mochi
Some peoples backs were bent
Some danced in the laneways
And the moon was pulled
The moon pulling was a few blocks away in an area where the sushi sky was thought to be at its brightest. There were several long waits at intersections before I got there. As did some of the Japanese at some of the intersections while half listening for a crow caw to herald the change of lights I read a few pages of my book and admired the pink and white sky around the moon.
On the walk, though I passed several poles with hooks, there were neither old people nor children hanging from them.
Moon pulling, by the way, started many centuries ago.
The Kyushu people have a legend that says there was a time when the moon was often in the sky and that it just appeared and disappeared almost as if on its own volition. The story goes that somebody found and cut the strings that attached the moon to the sun and so the moon dropped to the earth and the space it left was filled by the sushi sky.
Some time much later some inhabitants of Kyushu, on travelling to other parts of Japan, observed that they all had a yellow moon that in the course of about 28 days, rose almost on a daily basis and crossed the sky and changed shape from a crescent to a large ball and then to a small crescent again. Kyushu had nothing like that so on their return they suggested the creation of a moon that would appear regularly in the sky.
Though all sorts of artisans worked on its creation for a very long time, the best they could come up with was a moon that needed to be pulled by ropes and which could only be pulled from north to south and back again across the sky. Moreover the pulling was very arduous whatever method was used.
They decided in the end to pull the moon back and forth just once a year. They chose the time when the clouds were like salmon sushi as that seemed to best match the yellow that they had used to paint the moon.
To pull the moon they used to use local water buffalo which were once present in Kyushu as they - or rather their dung - was used for the cultivation of Kyshusu oyster mushrooms. Dung has now been replaced with soybean meal or hulls to which some old, mouldy kelp blades or stipes - which are now in abundance - have been added. Consequently there is no need for water buffalo and there are now no water buffalo in the area.
They then tried water buffaloes from Yubu Island thinking that as they pulled tourist carts they might be strong enough to pull the moon but ultimately found them wanting. So for a period after that they had crows from near the castle moat to do the pulling. They were inclined however to pull in an up and down swooping motion rather than straight backwards and forwards. It didn't fit the traditional pulling the moon back and forth, and made some people giddy. Nowadays drones pull the moon to and fro across the night sky.
The loss of that more natural feel provided by the buffalo is regretted by some people but it does mean that nobody is the victim of meadow cakes dropping on them from above.
So this year it was drones doing the pulling but in acknowledgment of the previous pullers they formed water buffalo shapes in the sky whilst pulling the moon back and forth, back and forth. The moon disappeared either to the south or north as it reached the horizon. On its reappearance you could see the children holding their breath in expectation that with this reappearance the Rabbit would also appear.
While some drones pulled the moon back and forth others filled empty spaces with choreographed flight moves. One of these I noticed was a Bermuda park with people-shaped drones milling aimlessly. Another was people still waiting for the pedestrian light to turn green. Or perhaps waiting for a crow to caw. And of course there was a drone murder of crows that flew across the face of the moon.
A complementary soundscape was provided by the inhabitants of the sea who, though affected by the noise and light, had decided to participate in the event rather than complain about its effect on their otherwise quiet and darker-lit lives. Higher pitched sounds were the province of flying fish and some of the smaller shellfish such as pippis. Lower pitched sounds were provided by octopi and some of the starfish. A blue whale provided the deepest sounds. Some smaller scale lightning was provided by algae and plankton. They produced small, moving patterns on the water.
When at last, after the moon had been pulled innumerable times across the sky, the Rabbit appeared - all covered with rice flour and tired out from pounding rice - everyone cheered and the crows cawed. They cheered and cawed not only for the appearance of the Rabbit but in anticipation of eating mochi or mochi ice cream. And of course because for a few hours in the year they’d seen the moon cross the sushi sky.
At that point the mochi dropped. Lots of small, sweet-smelling, slightly kelp-smelling round parcels carefully wrapped in kelp leaves and the children - and some of the adults - went wild with delight, collecting as many of these parcels as they could.
The Rabbit is actually one of the area’s senior citizens who, chosen by lot, gets the job of dressing as a rabbit and pounding the rice. The person, being elderly, is often not capable of pounding with much strength or for a long time so in the background are several “apprentices” who take turns pounding.
The apprentices are usually also fairly elderly and take it in turns assisting the Rabbit. While resting, they often partake of - sometimes too much - Old Kelp Wine made from the mouldy stipes of kelp plants, mushrooms and a little of the moat water.
When meadow cakes are dropping from the skies
Don’t look up for mochi, there’ll be something else in your eyes
But if you are ever drink moat water real quick
That will prevent you ever getting sick
After the Rabbit’s appearance, the march. This involved various groups marching and dancing along a route near the castle moat. The route was chosen in part at least as recognition of the place of crows in the life of the city.
The Rabbit led the march with its start called by a lone crow that first flew the full length of the march, returned to the front of the march, cawed loudly 10 times and then perched on the Rabbit’s shoulder. The Rabbit walked off with the rolling gait of an overweight Russian pedestrian in Asia.
The Rabbit walked ahead of a banner, the official banner for the march, which had “You are here” emblazoned in maroon red on a light blue background and with two dark blue arrows, one pointing up and one to the left. I recalled seeing that design on the way to the restaurant but still couldn’t see its meaning.
Behind the Rabbit, filling their mouths with mochi, came several groups of children. One group of about twenty mimicked the Rabbit’s gait. Rolling from side to side. Others were on poles with their multi-coloured clothing flying in the wind and still others in cubes. In the march they bounced along rather than were shot up into the air.
The winner of the spine-straightening competition, the skeleton-like one, stood at the front of the vehicle these children were on leaning slightly forward like a semi-upright ship’s figurehead.
Following this came drummers and dancers, some representing businesses in the town and some its produce. This year one float was a giant can from the kelp canning factory and another a kelp airbladder. There was even a bowl filled with dancers dancing in kelp soup and of course the inevitable mushroom on which the person with the most bent spine sat.
Other elderly people had their own float on which they walked up and down with eyes cast downward.
I almost forgot the train. The train this year was the Yellow One Man Diesel Train. It should have been a Dencha but apparently that had been pre-booked for a moonpulling in another city. I was actually very pleased that it was the Yellow One Man Diesel Train as though I had only ridden it once I considered it as a familiar friend with its comfortable seats, a few fronds of errant seaweed hanging here and there and the dents and dings from its surfing days.
Its role was to carry any march participant who for whatever reason needed a rest. Most of its passengers were the elderly bent but some were young people who’d not been used to, for example, skipping for a long time and some were people who just wanted to ride on their friend, the train.
It therefore ran parallel to the march rather than having a specific spot within the march.
In addition to the mochi that the Rabbit dispensed there were people from various temples around the town also handing out kelp in various forms. Some fresh, some ready to eat and some in cans or bottles. Kelp wine was also sold in stalls off to the side of the march to the marchers and the onlookers.
The end of the march signalled the end of the festival and was marked by a flypast of crows. Then came several rowing eights carrying the sea creatures back to the different areas of the sea that they normally inhabit. A shuttle service of rowing eights I thought.
Whole groups of children waved goodbye whilst skipping and chanting and gradually everybody dispersed and, while waiting at intersections chanted:
Backs straight
Rabbit’s gait
Mochi, kelp
Crows won’t help
Caw one, start
Caw two, stop
Caw three, Caw four
Murder of crows at the door
Then the blue whale sang and disappeared under the water.