Gujo: Japan's festival town

A mediaeval festival that has been a tradition for hundreds of years in Japan saw Maria Visconti dancing the balmy night away together with hundreds of people.

Gujo-Odori — clap those hands!

The night is warm, the moon is fat and I’m being swept away by a four-hundred-year-old ritual meant to unify people ­­­– irrespective of wealth or origin. There are moments in life when humanity envelops you and carries you away on its shoulders, as it were.

I sail over the street in time with about 500 others to the sound of flutes, shamisen and drums. The dance steps are quite simple but stylised and restrained, depicting the moon on a warm summer’s night, a samurai riding a young horse, a child’s ball game. We surge in an orderly fashion and move together side to side. We clap and stomp our feet in time. Most wear yukatas (light, cotton, summer kimonos) and wooden getas (thongs) but there are people in jeans too.

I am in Gujo, a mediaeval Japanese town moated naturally by the Yoshida, Kodara and Nagara Rivers which make the old centre of town an island. The castle on top of Mount Hachiman overlooks the flagstoned streets winding down its sides.

A network of stone culverts channels spring water along the streets. The water level can be temporarily raised in front of each house by sliding a wooden paddle into the carved grooves on the sides of culverts. This method of raising the water level of a particular section allowed the locals in the past to wash their vegetables, clothes and dishes in the water, all at prescribed times so as not to pollute one’s veggie washing with another’s laundry water.

At the Sogi-sui source and shrine, a venerated site where underground spring water surfaces, four pools illustrate the ancient system: the first one is for drinking, the second for washing rice, the third for washing vegetables and the fourth for cleaning tools.

In Gujo, a series of ten traditional dances is performed on the streets for 32 consecutive nights including a few special dates when the dancing goes until dawn. From above, the scene must look like a mandala, a series of concentric circles of dancing people moving rhythmically around the base of the mount and its castle. The Gujo Odori takes place from August to early September each year, coinciding with summer and the impending harvest, and Obon, the period when ancestors’ souls come back to earth (similar to the Dia de los Muertos in Mexico).

Gujo is keen on involving visitors in the festival. At the Iwasaki replica food workshop near the train station, visitors are taught the art of producing a well-turned plastic iceberg lettuce and tempura prawns. The visit is not only fun, but informative. The ubiquitous plastic food displays on the shop fronts of most restaurants in Japan originated in Gujo where their creator, Takizo Iwasaki, lived in the early 1930s.

Further north Hida-Takayama offers well-preserved Edo period streets full of boutiques and cafes, some of them housed in ancient ‘kura’ houses, their thick walls covered in stark white plaster. Japan’s greatest scourge had always been fire, as all houses were made of wood and paper. For this reason, kura houses were a staple building in all villages throughout Japan.

With one-metre-thick walls built of packed mud, they were fireproof houses for the villagers to store their treasured possessions, including heirloom kimonos, porcelain and scrolls. Their distinctive appearance (solid, two-storey, with massive window frames designed to interlock tightly) is eye-catching.

A special treat in Takayama is to dine at Kyoya by the river. Its specialty is Hida beef or fish, cooked at your table on a magnolia leaf which imparts a distinct smoky flavour to the dish.

The Festival Floats Museum (10 minutes by taxi from the Takayama train station) houses ­– under a spectacular geodome – a collection of lacquered floats with animatronics displays. Each display produces a stunning sound and light show.

At the northern end of the Gifu prefecture are, Shirakawago’s 100 still lived-in thatched farmhouses (a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1995). Visiting this area plunges you into an idyllic, remote valley with charming gingerbread houses scattered among rice paddies and waterlily ponds. Pretty inaccessible before new tunnelling opened it up to visitors, Shirakawago looks like a make-believe village, but it’s authentic. Isolated for centuries, the tiny hamlet survived time pretty much intact and now some of the grandest houses can be visited.

In winter, snowfalls of three to four metres make these houses twinkle like fireflies in the snowy night. Their steep, angled roofs are locally called gassho-zukuri meaning ‘praying hands’, as they resemble the shape of two hands joined in prayer. It is possible to stay in one of these houses, as some have been adapted to serve as ryokans or minshuku (bed and breakfast).

The Gifu prefecture (isolated from the sea and circled by mountains) offers a palette of uniquely Japanese and off-the-beaten-track experiences that will provide you with anecdotes and photos you will dine out on for years to come. So, get up, go to Gujo and…dance!

The writer travelled courtesy of the Japan National Tourist Organisation.

Getting there: Cathay Pacific flies direct from Sydney to Nagoya. The Gifu prefecture can be easily accessed from Nagoya and Kyoto in around two hours by train.

Staying there: information about staying in traditional ryokans and minshuku is available at the Tourist Office in Gujo or Nagoya or online at www.japaneseguesthouses.com
For staying at Shirakawago’s thatched houses, visit: www.japaneseguesthouses.com/db/shirakawago/; www.gujohachiman.com

Visit: www.jnto.org.au