Sept. 27, 2011
Small quiet town excited on traditional mechanical doll play in autumn festival
Yame City is a quiet town which lives on a variety of small handicraft industries in the southern part of Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan, but a joyful mood spreads among local people toward the end of September when a time-honored mechanical doll play is performed every year.
The Yame-Fukushima Toro Ningyo show is one of the most existing events in a three-day town-wide festival around the Autumnal Equinox holiday. The doll play, designated as an important national tangible folk cultural asset in 1977, is performed by a company of more than 60 local ordinary people five times every day.
The stage for the 30-minute show is a three-story knockdown house, called “Yatai,” which is set up in the precincts of Fukushima Hachimangu Shrine in the heart of the city. The event attracts a few thousand spectators from around the town, but local people look forward to seeing the last performance on the last night because it is played with all sliding paper doors and shutters around the stage removed to show doll operators, singers, musicians and others to the audience. Local people call the doll play “Tapponpon,” never call it “Toro Ningyo,” as it is officially named. While saying “Let’s go to see Tapponpon,” they gather at the shrine in high spirits.
The event started in the middle of the 18th century as part of “Hojouye” life-releasing rites dedicated to the shrine and later, a mechanical doll play began with a method introduced from Osaka. The doll play used to be performed by residents of about 10 neighborhood blocks around the shrine, but it is currently performed by a company formed by local residents to preserve the cultural asset.
One of major products from Yame is a Japanese green tea brand. Local people also live with traditional handicraft shops, such as “chochin” paper lanterns, candles, papermaking, arrows and stone garden lanterns. They also boast of a group of old two-story houses with hipped gables and white walls on Monmachi Street in front of the shrine, which was lined with banboo lanterns in the evening during the festival.
The last performance this year attracted fewer but more excited spectators than those in the daytime. Every time an MC introduced members of the company one by one at the start of the last performance, shouts of cheer arose from among the audience, spreading a relaxed, friendly atmosphere in night air around the stage. The local economy in Yame is less impressive than ever, as is the case with many other regions across Japan, but local people are determined to preserve and inherit the doll play and other time-honored cultural assets in the town over generations.
Small quiet town excited on traditional mechanical doll play in autumn festival
Yame City is a quiet town which lives on a variety of small handicraft industries in the southern part of Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan, but a joyful mood spreads among local people toward the end of September when a time-honored mechanical doll play is performed every year.
The Yame-Fukushima Toro Ningyo show is one of the most existing events in a three-day town-wide festival around the Autumnal Equinox holiday. The doll play, designated as an important national tangible folk cultural asset in 1977, is performed by a company of more than 60 local ordinary people five times every day.
The stage for the 30-minute show is a three-story knockdown house, called “Yatai,” which is set up in the precincts of Fukushima Hachimangu Shrine in the heart of the city. The event attracts a few thousand spectators from around the town, but local people look forward to seeing the last performance on the last night because it is played with all sliding paper doors and shutters around the stage removed to show doll operators, singers, musicians and others to the audience. Local people call the doll play “Tapponpon,” never call it “Toro Ningyo,” as it is officially named. While saying “Let’s go to see Tapponpon,” they gather at the shrine in high spirits.
The event started in the middle of the 18th century as part of “Hojouye” life-releasing rites dedicated to the shrine and later, a mechanical doll play began with a method introduced from Osaka. The doll play used to be performed by residents of about 10 neighborhood blocks around the shrine, but it is currently performed by a company formed by local residents to preserve the cultural asset.
One of major products from Yame is a Japanese green tea brand. Local people also live with traditional handicraft shops, such as “chochin” paper lanterns, candles, papermaking, arrows and stone garden lanterns. They also boast of a group of old two-story houses with hipped gables and white walls on Monmachi Street in front of the shrine, which was lined with banboo lanterns in the evening during the festival.
The last performance this year attracted fewer but more excited spectators than those in the daytime. Every time an MC introduced members of the company one by one at the start of the last performance, shouts of cheer arose from among the audience, spreading a relaxed, friendly atmosphere in night air around the stage. The local economy in Yame is less impressive than ever, as is the case with many other regions across Japan, but local people are determined to preserve and inherit the doll play and other time-honored cultural assets in the town over generations.
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