In case you’re waiting, here’s an update. Of 978 photos, by far the most I’ve ever taken in one day, I’ve narrowed the selection down to 210. From there I’m now down to 168. My aim is to whittle the selection down to 100… it’ll take a few more days.
Tags: dance festival, domatsuri, nagoya
I needed to mind my daughter today, the first day of the Nagoya Dance festival, known in Japanese as ‘Domatsuri’. The Nagoya Domatsuri is becoming the premier event of this type in Japan, even though the event was inspired by the Hokkaido Dance Festival, and is only a little more than 10 years old.
Since I couldn’t do any shooting, I took my little Sony Bloggie (professional grade bloggers video camera [insert sarcastic facial expression]), and recorded some performances. With a three year old leaning on me, and crowds getting in the way, this is the best vid’. I hope you get an idea of the high energy that performers put in. Annually, more than 23,000 performers take part from 3 years of age up to perhaps 80 or so. There are local town teams, university teams, and corporate sponsored teams. TV audiences are almost 2 million. It’s a big event.
I’ll be properly photographing this tomorrow (Sunday) when I can bring in my gear.
Tags: dance festival, domatsuri, japan, japanese, nagoya
It’s almost the end of summer, and it’s time get those end-of-summer images now! Get 20% off any of my images only at my PhotoShelter account, until 8th September 2010. Minimum purchase is USD$25, coupon code is: SUMMERSCRAMBLE2010.
What to get:
- Japanese night festival (Ishidori)
- Nagoya Dance Festival (Domatsuri)
- Cosplay (World Cosplay Summit, 2010)
- Sumo (the controversial Nagoya tournament)
Next weekend is the Nagoya Dance Festival, or ‘Domatsuri’. I’ll be attending. Usually it’s either extraodinarily hot and sunny, and terrible to photograph in; or wet, humid, hot and terrible to photograph in. Wish me luck this year. The Nagoya dance festival is not a traditional town festival, nor traditional dance event. It was modelled on the Hokkaido event that the Nagoya university students attended, and were impressed by. Consequently, because of the Hokkaido influence, there are Sino-Japanese style dances, rock/pop influences, as well as more traditional or jazzed-up styles as well. It’s dynamic, and a feast for the eye. I always love to see the Kyoto University teams, they have time and depth-of-knowledge to dedicate in their preparations for this event. This is a must see for all tourists visiting Nagoya at this time of year.
My blurb for PhotoShelter portfolio gallery (shown below)
The Nagoya Dance Festival competition, known locally as Domatsuri is an annual summer event held at the end of August. Domatsuri was first organised by university students in 1999, and later taken over by the city. It now attracts over 200 teams with over 20,000 participants, with an audience of nearly 2 million viewers.?
As you can see it’s a big event, and a very big deal. More information can be found at the Domatsuri webpage (in English). Below is the gallery available on my PhotoShelter portfolio, but more is also available at Asia Photo Connection (13 images available, see pages 5-6).
Nagoya Domatsuri – Images by Andrew Blyth
Tags: competition, dance, domatsuri, festival, japan, japanese, matsuri, nagoya, summer, traditional
I don’t have much of a chance at the moment to play in the studio. So, when a neighbour gave me this jar of home made preserved tomatoes, I couldn’t resist. They looked and tasted fantastic. Sorry, this is the best I could do for sharing. I attempted something a little different with the lighting, trying to keep it a bit bright, but also not striking the jar directly.
Products – Images by Andrew Blyth
Tags: food, high key, jar, product, studio, tomato, tomatoes
Every year it’s been a tough one. Last year I wanted to go, but found that for one reason or another, I had something else to do (I don’t remember). The year before was my first time attending, and it wasn’t bad. I went on the Sunday, the day of the main events and got some great shots. It was a pretty nervous experience, trying to work out what’s cool and not cool to do. Working out how to photograph people in crowds and such, and also contending with crowds, too.
This year was different. I went on the opening day, the Osu Kanon parade in the Osu district of Nagoya city. There were more people there than organisers had expected, and jammed in a much smaller space, and it wasn’t elbow-room only, but squeezing-room only. It was perhaps the hottest day of the year so far, and with perhaps the highest humidity yet experienced this year. Needless to say, migrainers like myself didn’t have much fun.
As for the photography, some light cloud cover can be nice to even out the light, but thick clouds did not help, invoking noisy pictures. It was a tough day, and I fear the photos bear that result. These are available at a lowered price at my PhotoShelter account, no model releases due to the public nature of the event. However, as you see, the costumes were amazing, and as you can guess, so to the experience for the crowds and the young re-carpeted cosplayers.
World Cosplay Summit 2010 – Images by Andrew Blyth
Tags: cosplay, japan, japanese, nagoya, summer, world cosplay summit, youth culture
Each year in summer, at the most humid time of year, when it’s really, really, really hot. When people have been dying because of heatstroke and dehydration. The people of Kuwana City have their annual summer festival, known as the the “Stone-bringing Festival”, or “Ishidori” in Japanese.
I’ve asked around, but haven’t been able to get a clear and certain story of what it’s all about. The best guess an educated friend of mine could make is that usually these festivals are a time when the local people bring offerings of rice to their main local Shinto shrine. Though, one year, there must have been a problem, and so the people couldn’t bring rice. Though, the show must go on. Instead, each town, with their portable shrines deliver a white stone, to represent the rice that they would have brought if they could spare it. For one reason or another, the idea must have stuck and is continued to be repeat to this day. Incidentally, in convenience stores like 7-11, cooked rice balls are available, and make a convenient small meal on the go; much like our sandwiches. I don’t know if they had rice-balls a couple of hundred years ago, but it’s possible, and may explain why a single white stone can so easily represent rice.
During the bombing of the area in World War two, many of the town shrines were destroyed. Each year, even recently, another portable shrine is added to the annual festival, as a replacement for the one they lost 60 years before. It is expected that there would be more portable shrines added in the coming years, at least until all the towns of Kuwana City have a portable shrine again, and perhaps some new comers, too.
All these images are available now at my PhotoShelter account.
Kuwana Ishidori (Kuwana City Stone Brining Festival) – Images by Andrew Blyth
Tags: event, festival, ishidori, japan, japanese, kuwana, matsuri, religious, shinto, stone-bringing, traditional
Some time back I invested in a cheap little Sony Bloggie. It’s an alright camera, as you will see. It is so light that it’s hard to hold steady, as you will see that, too. But that’s not the point. What I want to do is to give you a sample of what I see when I’m at an event, though I don’t see things with shakes and wobbles. Look in the tag cloud to the side for Sumo and matsuri (town festival) pictures
A rather noisy local town festival with portable shrines, drums and cymbals. The lanterns that you see atop of each portable shrine are arranged to be in the same shape as a rice ball (which is not in the shape of a ball, but a kind of Michelin-man triangle).
The second is a sumo bout. This footage was taken at the recent Nagoya Summer Grand Sumo Tournament. Watch out for the bitch-slap.
Several years ago I had the pleasure of going to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Whilst there I learnt of an important prison museum. I didn’t know what to expect, and I found myself stunned there. I now wish I hadn’t had all my senses pummelled by the events that occurred there. Consequently, with a shocked and unpleasantly awed brain, these are the best that I could get.
The great news is that Kaing Guek Eav, “Dutch” the former prison chief, was found guilty in his part of the atrocities at Tuol Sleng prison. Tuol Sleng was a regular high school, until the Pol Pot regime took over Cambodia in 1975. There ensued the Killing Fields. Dutch was a fairly low-ranked member of the Pol Pot regime, but to day, he’s the only person to have been brought to trial for his part in the Pol Pot era atrocities. In this prison, new prisoners were stripped to the waist, and had a piece of paper pinned to their skin for a a prison-record photo. They were then thrown into over crowded wooden cells in converted classrooms. Torture could include having fingers cut off with bolt cutters, being hung by the arms but were tied behind the prisoners’ backs causing horrible injuries, and there were more atrocities.
Tuol Sleng – Images by Andrew Blyth
Tags: Cambodia, Kaing Guek Eav, Khmer Rouge, Phnom Penh, Pol Pot, prison, Tuol Sleng
The idea occurred to me as I began shooting at the Nagoya Summer Grand Sumo Tournament on the 14th and second to final day. There had been scandals and problems. Let’s list some here:
- Abuse of apprentices (resulting in the death of one 18 year old)
- Allegations of match fixing
- Unruly behaviour in public of one of the top wrestlers (Asashoru)
- Giving highly prized ring-side tickets to gangsters (extremely taboo in Japan), and most recently
- Illegal gambling on baseball, and high school baseball games.
I can’t hit all of those points, but I’ll tell you a story through pictures. Here’s the link the the complete Japanese Sumo Gallery.
This isn’t an abuse scene, it’s just regular practice, and no one batted an eyelid (if they even noticed this)
As a result of all the scandals, ticket sales were down 10%, according to the national radio and TV broadcaster NHK, so the first half of the tournament had few seats filled. This image was taken early in the afternoon before the crowds had finished arriving.
Whilst some see the light of day, many members of the public are still sceptical and suspect that there’ll be more scandals.
As a result of the most recent scandals, involving illegal gambling, some of the top wrestlers were told to withdraw from the tournament, which has caused a thinning out of the ranks.
However, the later half of the tournament saw the Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium filled, though with late ticket sales. This image below, shows the banner displayed thanking the spectators for making this a sell-out day, which was seen much less in this tournament.
Generally, the heads of the Sumo Association have been seen as weak, ineffective, or unable to deal with the problems. These ring-side judges are actually conferring on a bout where two wrestlers knocked the referee out of the ring so the referee was unable to rule on the bout.
In the past, the Sumo Association has not wanted foreign sponsors and their sponsorship banners. However, many major sponsors including HB-101 has withdrawn their support. As a consequence, the Sumo Association has allowed in some foreign sponsors… The Golden M.
An innocent victim. Not really a metaphor, but pertinent information just the same. This proud Mongolian, Hakuho striding away from this bout, had just scored enough wins to secure a tournament victory. The next day he won again, making him completely undefeated for three tournaments straight, a first in modern (post-war) sumo. In a rare show of emotion, Hakuho wept with joy afterwards. However, the Sumo Association decided not to award him the coveted Emperor’s Cup (another first), given the circumstances and the general public’s current displeasure for their beloved national sport. Not getting the Emperor’s Cup on the day that Hakuho made sumo history has got to sting.
Cover-ups. The Sumo Association has tried to keep a lot under wraps in the past, but have decided not to cover-up the latest scandal. I bet they wish they could have put a big green tarp over the illegal baseball gambling fiasco.
The winners of bouts in the top divisions are shown with a red mark above or below their name. The wrestlers who have withdrawn from the tournament have their name listed on the left. Usually one or two pull out due to injury in each tournament.
Every crowd has a golden lining. Sumo is special. It’s the only sport that Japan has exported, and is iconic to Japan. It has its group of eclectic supporters like all sports in all countries. The Gold Hat Man (as I call him) is ubiquitous. He is seen in the much sought-after ring-side area on every day of every tournament since I’ve been in Japan (about five years now). He is one of the many characters that really enjoy the sport through thick and thin. He’s an inspiration to many.
But the crowds still gather to see their favourite wrestlers leave at the end of the day.
Tags: controversial, controversy, media, metaphor, news, sumo