The Boundary between Laughter and Prayer: The Hana Matsuri Swearing and Rebirth of a Village in Okumikawa, Japan (1960s)

The Boundary between Laughter and Prayer: The Hana Matsuri Swearing and Rebirth of a Village in Okumikawa, Japan (1960s)
The Hana Matsuri, held in a mountain village in Kitashitara County, Aichi Prefecture, is a festival of rebirth at the end of winter. While flutes and drums sound and dancers dressed in white welcome the gods, demons appear and exchange swears with the villagers. Hey, ogre! You're making the village worse! but this was not anger, but a sacred ritual to ward off evil. The demons responded, "Your laziness is to blame," and the place was filled with laughter. Such swearing was an act to release community tension and purify the villagers' hearts, a "paradoxical prayer" to release words that would not be allowed in everyday life. In the 1960s, electricity was still scarce in mountain villages, and flower festivals were the only entertainment and the core of faith. The place of swearing was a ritual of social purification, a characteristic of Japanese folklore where the sacred and the ridiculous coexist. On that night when laughter and prayer coexisted, the demon, a symbol of fear a
nd forgiveness, heralded the arrival of spring in the village.