Who Needs Holland?

It’s not entirely unfair to wonder how I spent my time in Toyama, since I didn’t stay up all night to watch for squid on the beach.  It isn’t all that big a town, and I’ve been here before, after all.  But what you may not know if you’ve never been to Japan is that there is ALWAYS something to discover.  You just have to find it.

My discoveries started Sunday night.  I was reading about something - I’m not even sure what it was at this point - and it mentioned Tonami, a town about an hour away on the train.  I knew because I looked at Google maps, and while I was there, I noticed they had a tulip park.  There was also a little pink date marker on the map, so I googled the next day’s date and Tonami.  The marker was undoubtedly for the ongoing tulip festival, but I also happened to discover that there might be children’s kabuki performances that day as well.  It was a little hard to tell, because I found two different dates on separate websites.  Regardless, I decided that I needed to make an excursion to Tonami.

On my way I decided I’d find out about the kabuki first.  Tulips are nice, but they weren’t something I could “miss” - they’d still be there later in the day.  Since I wasn’t entirely sure when the kabuki was taking place (or even IF it was that day) I didn’t want to miss it.  Also, it seemed like every last person who was on the train with me was going to see the tulips, so good riddance to people!  As I was about to go down the stairs on the north side of the station, I saw a poster announcing the Demachi Kodomo Kabuki Hikiyama Matsuri was the 29th and 30th of April.  I went into the information center to check the location - another thing that was sort of unclear from what I’d read online - and the oba-san pointed me in the right direction.

Now, allow me a brief interlude to admit that kabuki is not my favorite Japanese performance art.  The last time I experienced it the story was Naruto, and that still wasn’t enough to keep me awake through to the end.  That said, kabuki is unlike any other drama I’ve ever experienced.  Of course the costumes and make-up are distinctly Japanese, but even the way the actors move, using stilted movements and the kind of poses that wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, is so unique.

Likewise the voices used.  I found the young actress’ speaking particularly striking.  A little backstory for you: originally kabuki was performed entirely by women.  Then men took it over, as they do, declaring it indecent for women to be on stage (also as they do).  So for a very long time, all the female parts have been performed by men, at least in professional performances.  Children’s kabuki seems to play by a different set of rules, though, because there were girls in the play I saw, as well as depicted on the posters.  The way that she pitched her voice, though, sounded more like a man speaking in falsetto than a natural female voice, so it seems that an artistic necessity has, in this case, become the convention.

Another thing I preferred about this performance over the Naruto kabuki was the fact that I could take pictures.  The audience sat on stools in the middle of the road.  The performance took place in front of us on a small portable stage which reminded me of nothing so much as a mikoshi.  The crew mostly stayed inside the structure, hidden behind the scenery, although they were visible during costume changes and when the fox appeared early in the act.  Although everything was in Japanese - I’m pretty sure I was the only gaijin in attendance - I did catch the title: Yoshitsune Senbon-Zakura (otaku vocabulary for the win!). It seems like they were specifically doing the fourth act, based on Wikipedia’s synopsis.  It moved relatively quickly, but I decided after it finished that I was satisfied with my kabuki experience and moved on to the tulip park.

Now THAT was a completely different beast.  One regret I had after visiting the Netherlands back in 2016 was the fact that tulip season was over before I got there.  Last month Sensei visited her daughter there and her tulip pictures made me sick with envy.  So I thought I might be able to get a small taste of that experience in Tonami, and I did.  The park sprawled out, surrounding you with tulips of every color imaginable, and there were water wheels and fake windmills to give you that good Dutch feeling.  So Claude Monet never painted the garden in Tonami - I can hardly hold that against them.  However, when I saw that it was a joint project with some kind of Turkish organization...maybe I held that against them a little.  It’s not their fault that I’m a little bitter against my current employers, but after the Director teasing me that the school was following me on vacation (which I’ll explain when I’ve seen the end of the school year), I didn’t really appreciate the reminder of my indentured servitude.