Monday, October 16, 2006

Street Performers Festival 1

As mentioned in the Osu Kannon post, last weekend was a two day street performers festival. Just 15 minutes walk from my house (25 if you're short) and a whole weekend of entertainment, festival foods and booze (~o~)V.

This (left) is one of the members of the Oiran-Douchu parade. Based on a practice that reaches back to the Edo period (1603 - 1867), the Oiran-Douchu parade depicts beautifully made up and attired courtesan walking the streets with their attendants.
The participants wear a special type of Geta (wooden sandals) . These Geta are about 9 inches high, and the performers spend a lot of time practicing walking in them before the parade itself.










This group is a Chin-don-ya from Osaka. Chin-don-ya groups perform using various instruments, traditional and western, and dance. They are not seen now as often as they were, but they are still sometimes employed to advertise the opening of a new shop, just like a noisy sandwich board.








These two go under the name of 'sesame street' (セ三味 ストリート).
They are a performance unit from Tokyo, and perform using the shamisen (3 string cat skin covered instrument) and a variety of physical humor.











"Gamarjobat", the name of this pair of 'silent Comedy' performers.
I was almost too busy laughing to take photos... no really!








Belly Dancers!!!! Japanese Belly Dancers!!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Eclectic mix of performers judging by the pictures, and really excellent photos they are too. BUT, when I tried to enlarge them there was an error message. Anyway, those puppets, they are just wrong. There'll be one of those sitting at the bottom of the bed tonight-remember Terry Gilliam's film Brazil? Ben

Nick Benwell said...

something to do with the amt. of storage space I am allowed I think. am checking.
yea, samurai puppet wasn't it?