STOP WAR
Sunrise in Chigasaki, a costal city in Kanagawa prefecture. Mt. Fuji is a silhouette in the distant.
Kanagawa is best know for the iconic woodblock print ‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa‘ by the artist Hokusai.
Today the waves are less dramatic. The black sand beach pulses with energy as priests, festival revelers and onlookers gather.
This is the festival of Hamaori, a shinto festival to which roughly translates to mean the descend into the sea. Today the region’s deities are carried by the Mikoshi—the portable Shinto shrines—into the ocean. Where the waves offer purification.
The carriers sway with the rhythm of the warm tide as they chant rhythmically, dokkoi, dokkoi!
Much has changed since Hokusai’s time, he would not recognize the neon blitz of Tokyo, the zoomorphic hi-speed trains or the smartphone wielding crowds. But the chants of the Mikoshi carries would be familiar.
Probably they will continue long after the veneer of modernity has faded.
