Carpe Diem #838 Inuyama Festival

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

If you haven't voted yet for our "peace of mind" kukai submitted haiku than please feel free to do so before 10.00 PM (CET). You can send your votes to carpediemhaikukai@gmail.com

Today we have another wonderful Japanese Festival to attend. It is, as I look at several photos of this festival, really an awesome festival to attend. So please come with me to the Inuyama Festival in the Japanese Castle town of Inuyama.

The Inuyama Matsuri is held at the beginning of April in the city of Inuyama in Aichi Prefecture. 

Coinciding with the blooming of the cherry blossoms, the festival features processions of three leveled ‘dashi’ – traditional wheeled floats.

Credits: Inuyama Festival (Dashi)

The beginning of Inuyama festival

Inuyama festival was originally an event of the Haritsuna shrine, where Inuyama’s genius is enshrined. This became an annual event in 1635, by the chief retainer Hayatonosho Masatora Naruse’s order.

The highlight of Inuyama festival is a parade by 13 floats. Every float has very gorgeous three layered construction, Japanese automaton (or Karakuri puppets) and some of these can be seen only here in Inuyama.

All of these 13 floats are designated as Aichi prefectural tangible folk assets. The parade of floats itself is not that rare in Japan and can be seen all over Japan and floats are called in different ways. Hoko, Dashi, Yatai, Danjiri are examples of them and in Inuyama, floats are called Yama.

Credits: Haritsuna Shrine (were Inuyama Festival once was started)

parade of floats

under the blooming cherry trees
sound of Taiko drums

© Chèvrefeuille

With this haiku I have tried to bring that sweet Haiku Writing Technique of earlier this week "sense switching" and I think I succeeded. (What follows is a short video about Inuyama Festival, enjoy).

I hope you did like this episode on Inuyama Festival and I hope it will inspire you all to write an all new haiku (or tanka).

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until October 18th at noon (CET). I will (try to) publish our new episode, Kodomo No Hi (Children's Day, former Boys Day), later on. Have fun!