15 Years On: Major Shrine Festival Back in Fukushima Village

Iitate, Fukushima Pref., March 2 (Jiji Press)–For three days from Dec. 4 last year, thousands of residents and visitors had fun at a Shinto shrine festival held in the village of Iitate, Fukushima Prefecture, for the first time in nearly 15 years. The successful revival of the traditional event “made me more eager to create a new community with people who care the village a lot,” Jun Yano, 30, a member of the festival organizing committee, said. It had not been unusual for Yamatsumi Shrine, one of rare Shinto shrines dedicated to wolves, to be flooded with people and stalls during its annual festival before March 11, 2011, when the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and ensuing mammoth tsunami devastated coastal areas of Tohoku, Japan’s northeastern region, including Iitate. The festival, known for welcoming visitors with warm food at a makeshift thatched teahouse, took the long hiatus also because the village suffered the fallout from the triple meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and was ordered to evacuate all its residents. In January last year, Yano decided to help revive the event and joined the organizing committee comprising natives who know how the festival once was and new residents, after hearing a local seniors’ club member say, “I want to see the teahouse and street vendors at the festival again.” Influenced by her father, a cofounder of the “Resurrection of Fukushima” volunteer group, and other family members working for afflicted areas, Yano became interested in the village filled with the beauty of nature when she was a Tokyo high school student. After graduating from Tokyo University of the Arts, she moved to the village and launched a local revitalization company jointly with a friend. Yano and other committee members soon realized that it was unfeasible for locals alone to hold the festival, which had attracted 20,000 to 30,000 visitors each year before the earthquake, with nearly half of some 6,200 Iitate residents remaining evacuated to other municipalities while those who have returned to the village getting older. To overcome the manpower and fund shortages, they asked friends and university students outside the village to come in and kicked off a crowdfunding campaign. As a result, about 60 new staffers were secured and 5 million yen was raised as targeted. Older donators who were unaccustomed to paying online made bank transfers. Stalls are an integral part of festivals. The members called on street vendors who had joined the Yamatsumi Shrine event before to participate in the project and received positive responses form more than half of them. Business owners in the village also pledged their involvement. On the festival days, 32 stalls attracted approximately 6,000 visitors while warm dishes were served at a temporarily assembled thatched teahouse. A stage play based on a Japanese myth combined with the village’s history also fascinated festivalgoers, with some village people shedding tears saying, “Thank you for telling our story.” Expressing intention to continue to launch new projects from Iitate, Yano said, “I want to have this place attract interest even from young people while taking historical context into account.” END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]