Sunday, June 29, 2008

橋弁慶山(Hashibenkei Yama)

The figures on this float depict a scene from a very famous story in Japanese history: "Ushiwaka-maru", a young samurai boy, lightly jumped up onto the round-shaped decoration on the handrail of the Gojo Bridge in central Kyoto, while "Benkei", a big monk-warrior in armor, tried to swing down his pole sword against the boy.









The figure of Ushiwaka-maru standing only on the front supports of his clogs still creates a lasting, lively impression, and it is hard to believe that the figure was made 500 years ago. As its order in the procession is fixed (kuji-torazu) among all the carried floats and it has neither "yamakago" nor "shin-matsu", it is considered to be one of the oldest yama floats.
By T.S. on 6th Jul., 2008

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