When there’s a festival within biking distance, KCTC will often ride to it and take a breather at the festival site. The Akiba Festival happens in mid-winter every year out by the Kochi-Ehime border, about 45 miles out of the city.
Four of us left the Bike Shop early and took a direct route while a larger group of gnarly bikers took the scenic route and departed at the regular time. The snails and I reached a dam and the rabbits met us there twenty minutes later.
We crossed over the dam and took the road less traveled. The national highway continued on the opposite side of the chasm, and we tottered along a bumpy one-lane road on our side. I marveled at how peaceful the scene was and nearly forgot that we were headed for a Japanese festival, which is anything but serene.
We passed through a tunnel and BOOM there was the line of cars and tour buses. The climb began and bikes and cars alike struggled up the steep incline that showed no signs of evening out.
There was barely enough room for both bikes and cars, and tree roots caused many bottlenecks. Drivers glared and honked pointlessly as they squeezed past us. Loud noises rile me up, and there’s no quicker way to get me to explode than to ram something obvious into my ears at a high volume.
Add to this mounting frustration the double-digit grade and lack of turnouts, and you have a very unhappy Mac. I had no choice but to keep going because there was no room to stop. Dead tired and about ready to blow my stack at the idiots laying on their horns, a pile of leaves off the road finally offered sweet respite. But not before I emptied my lungs into the gorge.
I peered up the jagged rock before me and saw a parking lot, but I’ve seen enough mountain roads here to know that that was just Lot 1 of countless lots to come, each with about five parking spaces. This precarious, aggravating mountain hell was never going to end!
It finally did, and I’m not sure exactly how. Memories have been erased for my protection, I’m sure. The Bike Shops’ van was parked in Lot 58 or thereabouts, and I slowly changed into streetclothes. My hands were numb and my fingers useless. It’s something I’m coming to hate about the cold - my hands don’t work very well and when my fingers slip or miss whatever I’m aiming for and hit something else, it hurts like hell!
We were so far away from the festival that we had to bike there from the van. I put my gripes about Japanese festivals in my back pocket and rode along, feeling very naked without my helmet. We dodged pedestrians the whole way and passed two or three lines of people waiting for shuttles to take them up the mountain. The number of people, the lack of space, and the steepness of the walls of the canyon made the situation ridiculous.
We left our bikes in a drainage ditch and watched as a procession of colorfully-dressed children walked by. One boy was playing a little theme on a wooden flute and a couple of others beat drums. A man in a red demon mask followed in the back carrying what looked like a gigantic house duster. It was a yellow, 30-foot stick with a bunch of black feathers sticking out of the top, and that stick appeared to be the focal point of this festival.
We followed the kids to a large performance area that looked like it could be terraced rice fields the other 365 days of the year. Each level was PACKED with people and every third person had a camera. I don’t mean cell phones or cute little digital cameras, I mean telescopic lens, crosshares, that KASHINK!!! shutter sound, the works.
Many of these amateur photographers were so focused on their snapshots that they took a step or were pushed right over the edge of the terraces. At least half of the people in the crowd were older than 60, and everyone that took a spill before my eyes belonged to that group.
The men in demon masks started to play catch with the big yellow stick, and when one would catch it and work against the momentum, the stick bent so much that the feather duster touched people in the crowd.
The moves got trickier and one demon tried to make a diving catch of the stick only to miss and go toppling over a terrace edge and into a pile of brush. All of his weight was concentrated over his right shoulder, which popped out of the socket and caused him visible pain.
The crowd laughed. They laughed! They were entertained by this! I held back for a few seconds, thinking that perhaps it was scripted and that a demon in pain was some way to symbolically chase winter away and welcome spring.
The guy didn’t get up and started kicking his legs and pounding on the ground with his good arm. The crowd continued to roar.
That cut me off from reality. I felt like I was watching the whole thing from a theater. What would make people cram themselves into a perilous chasm stacked with shaky, unlevel terrain and laugh at someone else’s misfortune?
Few times in my life had I felt so disconnected from everything in front of me. My body was there, but I was not a part of any of it - the honking, shoving, and elbowing up the mountain. The price-gouging at the food booths. The risking of life and limb for the same photograph you could get on a postcard for 30 yen. Celebrating somebody’s agony.
Mob mentality is not unique to Japan, nor do I think what happened on the hill constituted it. However, I don’t understand why people like being a part of the crowd. I can’t comprehend what is enjoyable about doing what everybody else is doing to the point of personal discomfort and loss of principles.
The scene at this winter festival was chaos and madness. I felt sick to my stomach and wanted to escape, but freedom was not forthcoming; we would have to endure everything again on the way down the mountain.
I have never done well with crowds, but it seems especially bad for me in Japan. I recall sitting in a car in a riverbed waiting two hours to move, let alone get out, after a summer fireworks show in Fukushima. I had to physically rough some people up to escape from a huge music festival in Ibaraki last summer.
What is it about gigantic events that appeals to people? Perhaps it comes from watching hordes of people pass through the gates of Disneyland as a youngster, but I have an extreme aversion to being one of the paying suckers.
Japanese people seem to enjoy this situation by and large, although I know this kind of thing goes on at every rock concert and political demonstration across the globe. However, it’s one thing that will continue to stand between me and total understanding.
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