Festival of Ishioka city, Sep. 14-16, 1996

Anniversary feast of Ishioka Souja shrine is one of biggest festival in Ibaraki pref. and it has several typical charactors of festivals in Ibaraki, in musics, floats and so on.

In spite of rainy weather on 14th of September, we have many tourists in the center og Ishioka city. The festival takes 3days, the first day is the day for the god of the shrine to visit the center of the city, the next day for treating the god, and the last day for the god's returning to his home, the shrine. The god moves by "mikoshi," sacred palanquins with long train of priests and floats of religional lions. Almost whole day, decorated floats run around playing traditional musics "Ohayashi".

The data, especialy sound data, are big. Each image data is about 30 kbytes and sound data over 160 kbytes which contains 20 seconds of u-raw sound.

You can also find a detailed guidance to enjoy the feast of Ishioka at "FLOATS OF TSUCHIURA AND ISHIOKA.

Scenery of the center area

• We saw many tourists around the central part of Ishioka ciry. There were more than 400 stands.
• A cap of a manhole. A religional lion is a symbol of the feastival and that of Ishioka city.

Ceremony of the god's visiting the city

• Souja shrine. The mikoshi starts from here.
• The mikoshi is going. We saw long train of lion floats following the mikoshi.
• Priests in the train.
• Ceremony of the god's arrival at the temporal shrine.
• Many people come to pray at the temporal shrine. The mikoshi is seen.
• This year, people of this block was responsible for the festival. temporal shrine is also here inside of the block.

Lion floats

• A lion float. 31 lion floats were seen this year. A man carring lion head is dancing a dance of religional lion. Bigger lion heads have weight of around 20kgs. Such heavy ones are very rare in Japan.
• Ohayashi music "Shishi-mai" for a lion float (SOUND)

Floats

• Pulling a float. 11 floats were going.
• A big doll is put on a float.
• Traditional Dancing on a float.
• 2 floats are running together.
• Several floats gather at a crossing, frequently exchange positions.
• Ohayashi "Mimba" (SOUND), a music for Hyottoko dance.
• Ohayashi "Mimba" (SOUND)
• Ohayashi "Shimba(Shim-me)" (SOUND), a music for Kitsune (a fox daemon) dance.
• Calling, male vocal (SOUND)and female vocal (SOUND). Such calling style is quite modern and improvised. There are many variations.

Added Ohayashi music collections of 1997

These sounds were taken from an invited demonstration in festival of Sawara.

O-Sangiri (u-law,170K)

Ceremonial music for begining and ending of the feast.

Shichome (u-law,170K)

Music for "Okame," ladies dance.

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