SWEAT AND FIREWORKS: CAPTURING THE SACRED AT JAPANESE FESTIVALS.

This essay focuses on the journey of a sacred portable Shinto shrine, Ôtori Mikoshi, from Osaka Tenmangu Shrine to a river procession in Osaka and back during Tenjin Matsuri, one of Japan's three great festivals. Tenjin Matsuri, taking place on July 25, is known as a fire and water extravaganza that attracts over a million visitors each year, among them many professional and amateur photographers. We are here presenting results of fieldwork that extended over four years in an attempt to create a visual ethnography, to illustrate how ancient ritual practices are performed in contemporary Japanese society, and to explain how the festival becomes a temporary stage for the manifestation of the sacred, and for a display of traditional masculinity meant to appease the gods as well as ensure the welfare of the community. Matsuri, the Japanese festivals, are organized in order to provide entertainment both for the deities and the communities that celebrate and worship them, creating an extra-ordinary escape from the ordinary world we live in. Our work addresses the two entwined aspects of a Japanese festival: on one hand, the divine elements embodied by the rituals performed by priests and shamanesses at the main Shinto shrine, and the temporary one on the boat; on the other, the interaction of the participants with the sacred seen in their efforts to carry the mikoshi for four exhausting kilometers, and in their admiration of the fireworks offered to the deities. Unlike most matsuri photography, the photos presented here focus less on aesthetics and more on the meaning of their objects, the gestures, and the implied sounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]