The best festivals are the ones that have a “more is merrier” attitude. Their organizers and participants like it when people fly in from distant parts of the globe to join in on the fun. Matsue, Japan, a city of 150,000 people on the north coast of southwestern Honshu Island, hosts an annual drum festival every November 3rd where everybody is encouraged to join in and pound on the giant drums that are hauled on floats through the streets.Matsue Do Gyoretsu, the Matsue Drum Festival, combines the efforts of 30 neighborhood associations, each of which constructs huge two-meter-wide (6.5 feet) drums that are then mounted on stylized floats, called miyazukuri, and led through the city. Children dressed in happi coats (short, light robes often worn in summer or at parties) pull the floats, while young people atop the floats pummel the drums and toot on innumerable bamboo flutes.
People along the way often are invited to step up and have at the drums, and invitation that extends to anybody who’s in town that day. An increasing number of those invitees are foreigners, many of whom have quietly found their way to Matsue over the years, drawn by the drum festival and the city’s bountiful other charms.Matsue is geographically isolated from the rest of Honshu. Its location on the Sea of Japan (see map at the top of this page) puts it on the opposite side of Honshu from the great string of Pacific-facing cities that starts with Hiroshima in the southwest and runs northeast to include Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, Yokohama and Tokyo.Because it’s off the beaten path, Matsue has eluded detection by most foreign travelers to Japan. Yet it boasts a superb collection of attractions that, taken together, make for a most appealing destination:
· Matsue is a “water city.” Its location near the Sea of Japan, along the shore of Lake Shinji, gives the city a temperate marine climate and abundant greenery. Shinji, about 30 miles in circumference, is a bit of chameleon. Depending on the tides, it is either freshwater or saltwater. The brawny Ohashi river, which alternates between emptying Lake Shinji and delivering a saltwater-laden tidal bore into it, is a geographic fact that has forced townspeople over the years to build several hundred bridges and two canals just to get around. There are hot springs at the northern end of the lake, and the fish taken from both it and the nearby Sea of Japan have earned Matsue a regional reputation as a seafood destination.
· The city is the site of one of Japan’s best known and best preserved medieval castles, Matsue Castle, which overlooks both the city and Lake Shinji. The castle, unlike many others in Japan, survived the conflicts of the Tokugawa Shogunate period remarkably intact. It’s exterior five-story structure hides an interior stack of six fighting floors, each one designed to give defenders the maximum tactical advantage over invaders. Most distinctive about the castle is its foundation of small, irregular rocks, a notable departure from the customary structure of large, well-finished stones.· The city is legendary as a bastion of tea drinkers who take the tea ceremony and all of the hoopla surrounding a good cup of chai seriously. In fact, Fumaiko, a leader of one of the city’s most important clans, is remembered for introducing a simplified tea ceremony that allowed common people, who lacked the time and training for more formal gestures, to also enjoy the aesthetics of tea preparation.· Matsue boasts several nationally recognized shrines and museums, including Buke-Yashiki (samurai house), the Lafcadio Hearn Museum, and Yaegaki and Kamosu shrines (the latter a National Treasure)
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