Kunchi Festival, Nagasaki, Japan
Dozamachi is a historic district in Nagasaki, closely linked to the Portuguese presence in Japan, and considered by residents and shopkeepers to be a former Portuguese settlement. The community preserves many elements of this presence, particularly in its gastronomy. The Portugal-Japan Association of Nagasaki is located on its border.
In 1989, Dozamachi gave his first performance with the theme of Nanban-sen – the great boat of the southern barbarians – at the well-known Kunchi Festival in Nagasaki.
The parade float is a replica of the Kurofune – the great black ship – which annually anchored in the port of Nagasaki. The ship is decorated with the Portuguese coat of arms on the sails, the old coat of arms of Macau on the mainmast, and the current national flags of Japan and Portugal. The crew wears traditional Portuguese clothing – frock coats and hats. The musical accompaniment consists of flutes and festive songs, and occasionally a Portuguese folk tune, with the participation of the audience.
The performance features great dynamism in the rotating movement of the vessel – as if attacked by a strong typhoon in the open sea – maneuvered by a group of sailors. The synchronization of the movements is achieved to the beat of drums marking the precise rhythm of the heavy ship’s turns.
Iconographically, the choreography was based on a painting from one of the nanban screens in the Bunkakan Museum in Osaka, with paintings attributed to Kano Mitsunobu (1565-1608), reproduced in the Exhibition Hall of the Portugal-Japan Association in Nagasaki.
The large ship that participates in the Kunchi festival is stored in the Anthropological and Ethnographic Museum of Nagasaki.
Dozamachi’s last appearances were in 2010 and 2017, with the next appearance scheduled for 2027.
The Kunchi Festival
The Nagasaki Kunchi Festival is one of the city’s most popular festivals. It takes place annually between October 7th and 9th, a tradition classified in Japan as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Great Importance.
It consists of a parade of floats from the various neighbourhoods of the city, reflecting the historical, religious, and cultural heritage of each community. Participation is rotating, with a seven-year cycle for each district.
The festival’s origins date back to 1634, associated with the Shinto shrine of Suwa, following the prohibition of Christianity in the country. The shogunal government proposed replacing religious celebrations, notably the great Corpus Christi procession, with Buddhist and/or Shinto celebrations, using organizational forms analogous to those developed in Christian worship. In Nagasaki, the inhabitants were spatially organized by means of machi – neighbourhoods roughly corresponding to the old parishes – and were forced to participate in the festival as spectators, organizers or performers.
Similar to previous religious brotherhoods, the Kunchi procession, with votive dances, crossed the city’s main street from the port, passing through the old Cruz-machi neighbourhood, to the Suwa Shrine, replacing the function of the Corpus Christi procession as a central point of aggregation and coordination for the local population.
This process of structuring the procession, by which all neighbourhoods and their residents had to officially declare themselves as non-Christians, was at the origin of the Kakure Kirishitans communities – the hidden Christians of Nagasaki –, that remained hidden until 1865.
Following the great Nagasaki fire of 1857, which destroyed part of the Suwa Shrine, and the opening of the port to foreign trade in 1859, the Kunchi Festival became a new festival, in which participating neighbourhoods had the freedom to innovate and compete with each other, giving rise to the dazzling performances that currently reflect the cultural diversity and unique history of Nagasaki.
The festival was particularly important as a motivating factor for the communities of Nagasaki during the most turbulent periods of its history. The edition of 1945 took place on October 7 of that year, less than two months after the atomic bombing of the city (August 9, 1945).
The participation of the neighbourhoods grew steadily. Many of them began to replace traditional votive dances with floats that had a strong historical and cultural character, allowing the participation of young people and children, as well as strengthening community ties, which are of particular importance in Japanese culture. Each neighbourhood presented a float and/or a dance, some of which became famous.
The historic Dozamachi neighbourhood, featuring a strong Portuguese presence, began participating in 1889, originally only with traditional dances.
Currently, fifty-eight neighbourhoods join in the festival.
Nagasaki – the Portuguese origin
In 1571, the large black ship from Macau anchored in Nagasaki Bay, marking the founding of the new city – which would become the furthest limit of Portuguese trade networks.
The settlement expanded from the port onto the surrounding hills in winding streets, creating its own unique character.
From the beginning, the place was almost exclusively populated by Christians. In 1580, Omura Sumitada (1533-1587) ceded the port of Nagasaki to Jesuit missionaries, who took charge of its administration. The city was organized into parishes – the future neighbourhoods or machis.
In 1571, shortly after its founding, the city’s first processions took place.
The procession became a living reality in the centre of the urban space, with the entire population converging on the streets and the participation of the organizing institutions. The processional route became the central axis of urban life and the main route for the most important processions of the liturgical calendar. The procession route went from the Jesuit complex near the docks and commerce to the Cruz-machi cemetery, at the site of the church of St. Dominic.
The Corpus Christi procession, in particular, became one of the main annual events in the city of Nagasaki, integrating, according to the city’s social hierarchy, pious Japanese women, wealthy merchants, as well as, at the end of the procession, the so-called courtesans from the brothels of the marginal neighbourhoods. Throughout the procession, religious dances were performed in front of the Blessed Sacrament, in a symbiosis between regional and European styles, with sacred images and the participation of numerous children.
The city’s growth was linked to trade. Nagasaki became the main convergence point for trade networks that traversed the seas of the East, connecting Lisbon, Goa, Malacca, and Macau via the nanban-sen.
Its prosperity attracted, from the beginning of the 17th century on, other European maritime powers, notably the Dutch, who disputed the route to Japan through acts of assault and piracy.
In 1587, the promulgation of the Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) edict expelling the missionaries disturbed the trade of Nagasaki, given the great interpenetration between merchants and Jesuits. After the new Ieyasu Tokugawa (1543-1616) edict expelling the missionaries, in 1614 by, a large part of the population of Nagasaki remained Christian. The community included the most powerful Japanese in the district, merchants and local administrators, as well as the Portuguese and Luso-Japanese.
With the definitive expulsion of the Portuguese in 1639, the Christian period in Japan came to an end.
REFERENCES
- CURVELO, Alexandra, A Arte Namban e a sua circulação entre a Ásia e América: Japão, China e Nova-Espanha (c. 1550-c. 1700), Tese de Doutoramento, Lisboa, Departamento de História da Arte, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2007.
- ISHIO, Kazuki, Registos de 1889 (Meiji 22), quando Doza-machi participou pela primeira vez do festival Nagasaki Kunchi, Conferência Web de Estudos de Nagasáqui, Tabinaga, https://tabinaga.jp/tanken/, 2014.
- MATOS, Inês Carvalho, Património cultural da presença portuguesa em Nagasaki, Revista Oriente, Lisboa, 24, 2016.
- OTA, Yuki, Nagasaki Kunchi após a guerra, Coluna Kunchi de Nagasaki, 2021. https://nagasaki-kunchi.com/column/53/
- MOSQUERA, David Rivera, Espaços contestados e práticas rituais na Nagasaki da Idade Moderna: o festival de Suwa e a procissão do Corpus Christi, Princeton, Princeton University, 2025.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ3Y7QgVXt0&t=7s
PHOTOGRAPHIES
Adicionar comentário
Comentários