Sanja Festival

Category: People
Location: Japan-Tokyo
Abstract: You can see tattoos in magazines, you can see tattoos in tattoo shops, you can see them in exhibitions. But nothing is like seeing tattoos in the flesh: real, living flesh, in front of your eyes. And nowhere better to see that than the famous, and utterly fantastic, Asakusa Sanja festival: one of Japan’s best live gallery for all the color and art of traditional Japanese tattoos.
Description: You can see tattoos in magazines, you can see tattoos in tattoo shops, you can see them in exhibitions. But nothing is like seeing tattoos in the flesh: real, living flesh, in front of your very eyes. And nowhere better to see that than the famous, and utterly fantastic, Asakusa Sanja festival: one of Japan’s best-loved festivals, and definitely Japan’s best live gallery for all the color and art of traditional Japanese tattoos. Sanja Matsuri is a fabulous extravaganza of boisterous and wild festival revelry over three days of drinking, dancing and debauchery. It is one of the three biggest festivals in Tokyo, in one of Tokyo’s most traditional areas: Asakusa. The festival pulls in a staggering one and a half million people over three days. As the festival bursts into action, with its seething crowds, the musicians start up setting the rythymn, with their throbbing drums, and the high-pitched wild sounds of the flute rising faster and faster in time with the beat of the drums, getting the crowd’s blood going and raising excitement to fever pitch. The festival got started around thirteen centuries ago in honor of three fishermen who went out to catch some fish in the nearby Sumida River, but instead caught a small gold statue of the Buddhist goddess Kannon in their nets. The amazing happening was declared a miracle and the statue enshrined in the Asakusa Sensoji Temple. As in many other Japanese festivals, the whole thing is about portable shrines. The gods are said to be resident in the shrine throughout the year, but at festival time, the gods enter into portable shrines and get a tour of the neighbourhood. During the three days of the festival some 40 small portable shrines (mikoshi) from every neighbourhood around Asakusa tour their own district, but on the last day of the festival, the three biggest mikoshi come out from the main shrine to do the circuit in honor of the three fishermen..................would you like to have a rest of the story for your magazine? Let us know.