After the Festival

As with every year, the completion of yesterday’s day-after cleanup of Ryonan Park means that the 2023 (44th—it and I were both born in 1979 / Showa 54) Ichou Festa* is over. The end of my focused involvement in it is an enormous mental and emotional event each year for me. It is the end of my calendar year, for most intents and purposes (or intensive purposes, if we wish to jest together). When it ends, the leaves soon fall off the ginkgo trees completely and winter begins in earnest. Delicious, lonely winter. Time to wear warm clothes and seek out small warm spaces. Time to read. Time to eat too much. Hibernation.

During the busy US pleasure and business trip, Japan business trips, and Ichou Festa preparation and execution, I felt more and more desirous to sit alone in my office drinking coffee and listening to records with the kerosene stove running. That is what I am doing today.

My sociability swings back and forth on a pendulum. I want to do community things and interact a lot with a lot of people, and then I want to be alone in a quiet, self-centered-in-the-most-righteous-sense routine. That is not a bad cycle results-wise, but it plays out with some internal conflict about consistency as a person and duty to others versus duty to oneself. Someday I might strike a balance that will continue forever. Most likely the cycle will continue. Probably, accepting and even planning for and savoring the pendulum is best.

Today I feel relief and some pride at the success of this year’s Ichou Festa: Nobody got seriously hurt. We estimate that something like 406,000 people came**, and they were observed at the event to be having an objectively great time. At every committee meeting leading up to Ichou Festa, I state that our purpose is to put on a safe, fun festival: “安全で楽しい祭り… (anzen de tanoshii matsuri)” I say, every single time. Someone in the meetings has got to be so tired of the phrase. But that is truly all I care about. It has to be safe. It has to be fun. Nothing else is likely to remain in the memories of the community, especially the kids who look forward to it and who occupy the position of most important customer, for whatever reason***.

I do not commit to someday blogging an exhaustive account of this year’s Ichou Festa and its origins and evolution and my involvement over the years.

Today I feel really good.

*The English name “Ichou Festa” is of unknown provenance to me. It happened to be on the poster of some long-past year’s iteration and I adopted it as the way I call いちょう祭り / Ichō Matsuri. No one on Earth of whom I am aware actually calls the event “Ichou Festa.” I may or may not wean myself from the naming convention, with or without warning.

**It is impossible to accurately count how many people come to Ichou Festa each year; the official venues (including checkpoints to which people travel to get their wooden 通行手形 / “passage permits” branded) stretch 5.5 kilometers along the Koshu Kaido, and about 500 meters wide at the point of the Ryonan Park and Ryonan Kaikan (the old Higashi-Asakawa Station on the JR Chuo Line) sub-venues. I forbid you from demanding evidence for the attendance numbers, but rest assured that a massive number of people attends, as you can confirm by also providing your kind attendance.

***I lie here by implying that I don’t know why they are my most valued customer. The why is that I want kids to love the festival and through it love and eventually make efforts to sustain and improve the place where they are growing up. This is a schmaltzy and totally honest reason.