F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-241
Funa Danjiri (Boat Float Festival)
船だんじりふなだんじり
The Funa Danjiri is a bountiful-catch prayer festival held in the fishing quarter ("Uomachi") of Nagashima in Kihoku Town, Mie Prefecture, in conjunction with the annual rite of Nagashima Shrine. Said to date from the mid-Edo period, its centerpiece is a roughly ten-meter float (danjiri) built in the shape of a bonito pole-and-line fishing boat, hauled some 800 meters from the Nagashima fish market to the shrine. Children and young men in matching happi coats ride aboard, raising a forest of long red-and-white fishing rods and miming the act of pole-and-line bonito fishing. As the men haul the float with shouts of "Choisaa," they scatter "fortune candy" along the route in imitation of the live bait used to lure bonito. Against the mountains and sea of this fishing village, the swaying rods create a singular spectacle that gives visual form to the community's seafaring livelihood.
H I G H L I G H T S
Highlights
- 01A roughly ten-meter float shaped like a bonito pole-and-line fishing boat, bristling with red-and-white fishing rods unique to a fishing village
- 02Riders aboard the float mime pole-and-line bonito fishing, hauling up model bonito
- 03"Fortune candy" scattered along the route in imitation of live bait, plus rice-cake throwing by the local chamber of commerce
- 04A spirited haul of some 800 meters from harbor to shrine to cries of "Choisaa"
D E E P D I V E