Dosojin Festival...

Tonight was January 15, night of the annual Dosojin fire festival in Nozawa Onsen, Nagano. It stands out as one of my favorite events of the year. It is something you will never experience in any other part of the world. It is always such a cleansing event for me after the New Year.

I have written about it before I think...the madness, the sake, the fire, the chaos. This was my 4th time in a row, I haven't missed one since I've been here, and it's always been an important tradition. I'm not sure why. But you can't argue with tradition, however new or ancient. Tradition defines people more than you think. Sometimes tradition has special meaning to you, and sometimes it just makes you feel good and secure.

We had arrived just in time...the fireworks were exploding, the 42-year-old villagers were atop the heap of towering wooden logs, the 25-year-olds down below protecting their elders as is the usual custom. The other villagers were preparing a separate bonfire in which they lit torches to attack the column of wood towering over everyone.

We had positioned ourselves so we would be close to the edge of the line of torch bearers. It would become a flow of fire and chants, old as the the Shinano river. The roaming men with sake bottles tied around their necks were pouring it into my mouth until it overflowed onto my coat and down my shirt.

At first the children of the village were given a first-hand chance to run with a flaming torch towards a group of screaming men, trying to incinerate the old guys above. Normal childplay.

During this 'practice' time I befriended a local villager who was keeping the crowd at bay. I told him how much I loved this festival.

"Do you wanna try it?" he asked me. "COME ON!"

"Really?" I thought...it was my understanding that local villagers only should take part in this festival, but I had seen the occasional foreigner years before wandering down the path of flames. I thought that perhaps every year some outsiders were allowed to participate as 'special guests'. I expressed my reservations but he insisted. I admitted it was somewhat of a strange dream of mine to take part in this ritual...and thinking it might be my only chance to be in a Japanese fire battle, I agreed.

He ordered me to strip off my coat and my hat because they might get incinerated, and duck the rope with him. He handed me a bundle of dried reeds which would become my torch weapon to attack the standing tower of wooden logs (with drunk men on top, taunting me to try to burn them to the ground, with local chants).

When the children finished their enthralling encounter with fire and danger, the 'real men' went running and raging toward the main bonfire, lighting their torches. I was pushed into the fray. I lit my torch as naturally as I could and started a charge towards the defenders of the wooden tower, like I was in an Olympic stadium starting the ceremonies, or a villager trying to kill Shrek. All I remember was flames, punching, screaming, crunching. One of the defenders had defeated me and extinguished my fiery weapon. I had to move to the side of the tower to recive a new bundle of dry reeds.

I reached up and the second I caught a new bundle flying through the air, I heard an angry scream to my right. I looked over to see spit flying and teeth gnashing as an open hand connected with the side of my face. A large drunken local punched me in the head like Mike Tyson trying to win the heavyweight belt. My winter hat flew off my head and my ears started to ring.

All around me was fire, heat, shouting, anger, swirling animosity. It felt primal. I felt as though the universe was being reborn in my own Big Bang.

"FUCK OFF! IT'S A JAPANESE RULE! GET AWAY!" He screamed at me in Japanese. I was stunned and not sure how to react. The beating had knocked all words and logical thought out of my consciousness, Japanese, English or any language.

I knew immediately that I shouldn't have ducked those ropes, invited or not. This festival was not mine to participate in. I had known that it was only for locals, but felt like I had priveleges after being invited in. Every day you feel like an honored guest here, and I had naively thought that as usual I had special access because I was a foreigner and perhaps exempt from the rules. I tried to explain that I had been invited there and hadn't snuck in as they thought, but my brain was ringing. I put my hands up and backed off, but was pushed hard away from the fire. Some other guys had to hold the first guy back from going at me further. Another man in a helmet screamed at me and elbowed me in the ribs. "JAPANESE RULE!"

I had gotten stuck between the rock of hospitality and the hard place of traditionalism --- and traditionalism won with a fist to my head.

Something about big fires brings out the angry caveman in people, and though I had been pumelled by them , I was actually invigorated. Never had I seen a Japanese person stand up for something as fiercely as those men had, drunk and violent or not. Never in this country have I experienced such anger and commitment. I immediately gained a great deal of respect for those who stand up for tradition and loyalty. That was not my place to be. That was not my event. I guess I had felt some kind of entitlement for being there a few years in a row and felt that being invited in was some kind of reward, but hundreds of years of tradition should trump that. The man who invited me in to the chaos was either too eager to share his culture, or too eager to see my get decked by the Hulk.

Soon after I saw another foreigner get pushed out. "Japanese only!" they shouted at him.

"FUCK YOU, you racists! You are fucking racists!" he shouted back. "Can you believe these racists?"

It was his first time there and he had only been in Japan for a few weeks. He had ducked the ropes and hadn't been invited in.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and held him back from swinging at the locals. "Listen, it's tradition. You have to be a local. This isn't racism. It's just fucking tradition. Relax".

Eventually he got the point. This is not a college application, this is a mountain fire festival. No affirmative action here. This is a place were tradition actually still drives the community, so respect that. No matter how much a foreigner wants to have an authentic Japanese experience, this is not our place, and this is not our time. We can gain respect through our humility and willingness to understand, but we cannot expect to be fully embraced in situations like this where the bloodline goes back ages. It's just the truth and those who scream racism are simply making themselves look as narrow and blind as those who might actually be racist.

I watched the flames burn down and the tensions subside with the heat. Everybody was smiles and cheers as the embers burned their sorrows into the moonlit night. Amongst those embers were the remnants of my hat, my meager sacrifice for a healthy and happy 2008 in this place I know and love, but will never be my own...

The local stuff...

There are a millions interesting things I could write about over the past couple months, including a trip to Okinawa for Christmas to see the fam, a nice Japanese New Years in Tokamachi, some good skiing and some good times.

But I'll just write about what I did this Thursday night, tonight. Nothing interesting, just a night across the street.

My car was parked in again so instead of going out for dinner I skipped over to the very local izakaya. It had been a long time. I'm usually not sure what to expect when I go in there. It is usually a crapshoot of local izakaya food - like whale blubber or pig guts - or a strange conversation or experience. But that's what makes it worthwhile. It's always something to remember.

I went in and only one guy was sitting at the counter, the owner and president of my favorite sake company, Tenjinbayashi. He is an older man with a sullen face, and always looks lonely. I've never seen him accompanied by another person. He is outwardly gruff and cold looking. The wrinkles in his face are deep and his eyes are heavy and sunken. He is not someone you would approach from appearance alone.

Yet I've always liked him. He seems like a very natural man to me. There is no outward illusion or effort. He just is who he is. My main memory of him is when he gave my dad and I a tour of his factory. He wasn't outwardly friendly but just showed us around. He tried to explain things to me that he knew I probably wouldn't understand. At the end of the tour he gave us a sampling of his finest sake, then gifted me with 4 bottle of his finest reserves, worth hundreds of dollars. He was a kind man who didn't care if he was seen as so. His actions were what spoke.

Tenjinbayashi is the local Nakajo firewater and it's made down the street. It's the only stuff I ever bring home. It's turned into a fierce and heartfelt brand loyalty.

Recently I realized that I've been living in the Bordeaux of Japanese sake and I don't know anything about the stuff, other than the tours of the local brewery. So I found a book about nihonshu in English and started to study up on it. I learned some terminology and the different kinds of sake there are out there. I didn't know it, but the world of sake can be as over detailed and snobby as the world of wine.

When I saw him in the bar I wanted to ask some questions like a student meeting a master. We exchanged New Year's greetings because it's been a while sinced we drank together. After that I started asking about this type and this type of sake. What rice is it made from? What's your specialty? What are you drinking now?

I had ordered a beer but of course he had a flask and cup of sake in front of him, and I was thinking it was probably the good stuff. He was a brewmaster and owner of a well known sake company, he must know what he's doing.

"Nah, I'm drinking the cheap stuff! No one around here can afford the stuff I make," he said.

I was surprised. The stuff he was drinking probably came out of a box. It was like a master microbrewer drinking Bud Light.

"Fair enough," I thought. Even the cheap stuff is pretty good when it's warm. He ended up treating me to four flasks of it (that's why I like going there...one way or another there is always free sake in my glass). I ate some local fare with it and started talking with him. With local older guys in an izakaya, it's not so much talking as listening. Depending on how thick their dialect is, it's not so easy to understand. Older guys seem to have their own garbled language, and when they've been drinking it sounds like they are speaking with a mouth full of burning hot peanut butter.

What I like about the sake guy is that he talks to me like a local. Part of the problem with talking to locals is they assume you only understand 5% of what they are saying, which is sometimes true, but they let the differences in our race backgrounds precede the possibility for natural conversation. I always appreciate it when people talk to me like they don't care where I'm from; Mr. Sake-man always talks to me like he talks to his old drunk friends, and I enjoy it. I don't always understand, and it often turns into background noise as though his words are coming from a distant radio, but I still nod and agree and somehow we communicate. This is real local Japanese inaka life. We ate and we drank and we carried on. We laughed even if I didn't quite know what we were laughing at.

After hours of this I walked home through the thick Nakajo fog. The cheap sake clouded my head like the thick local accent he spoke. He was just happy to have someone to talk to and share his company on a foggy weeknight, and I guess I was too.