Festival Ends Exceeding Expectations with
240,000 Participants
（Morioka Times 5/28/2012）
The Rokkonsai festival, representing the 6
Northeast Japan prefectures, was held this year in Morioka city, sponsored by
the Rokkonsai executive committee. The parades unfolded magnificently from Morioka city’s Chuuodori
and Maruyama districts, ending without incident on May 27th. Lively
performances captured the audiences, while all around the air was filled with Northeast Japan’s energy to “Revive as One” from the
earthquake disaster. According to presentations from the Rokkonsai hosts, there
were 130,000 visitors on the second day of the festival, the entire length of
the festival exceeding all expectations with a total of 240,000 visitors.
The Rokkonsai parade, which holds performers
from the 6 Northeast Japan prefectures, began at 12 noon, with crowds so large
that entrants to the festival had to be restricted. As the participants, all
from 6 different prefectures, finished the parade and prepared to return to the
festival site, they were surrounded by visitors with applause and loud cries of
“Thank you!” and “It was wonderful!”.
Tsuyoshi Kawamura, 65, of Morioka’s
Higashimatsuzono district, was one of the lucky sightseers who managed to get a
front-row view of the parade. “It was the best. I was deeply touched, knowing
that the performers had all come from different areas to perform for everyone,”
he responded with heartfelt emotion. Tomoe Numahata, 47, a visitor from Aomori’s Hachinohe
city, said that she felt “very satisfied, being able to see six different
festivals in the same place. [She] enjoyed it very much.”
The deep emotion was affluent in the festival
performers as well. A participant in the Rokkonsai
festival held in Sendai as well as a Sansa Odori Seiryuu Association member,
Rui Abe (30, Oushuu City), says that “the Rokkonsai Festival in Sendai was
chaos, and several of the visitors spoke very harshly to me. But this time, the
festival was held partly as a means of revival after the earthquake, and it was
very pleasant.” Hajime Saitou, an enthusiastic performer of the Akita Kantou
Festival, 44, explained that he “wants to see some courage brought to the
disaster-stricken areas.”
At the closing ceremony, everybody gathered
around the specially set stage in the Morioka castle remains park. Rokkonsai
Executive committee member Hiroaki Tanifuji spoke words of gratitude that “[we]
were able to share the Touhoku people’s enthusiasm and feelings of
reconstruction with the rest of Japan.”
Various opinions on the festival and the
future of the Touhoku region were heard during the festival. Katsutoshi
Motomochi of Morioka’s
Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that he felt “the prefectures were able
to express their earnestness [about reconstruction]. This will have a
considerable effect on the Touhoku region’s revival.” He continued in a bracing
tone that “We must use these festivals as a means of stimulation [for
reconstruction]. “
Many hotels and restaurants in Morioka said they had
great success due to the influx of visitors to the festival, but there were
some shop owners who said that they were unable to sell many of their goods.
Liquor store owner Kazushige Yoshimoto, 47, remarked that “Iwate prefecture
should call in more people to send to the devastated coastal areas.”
Morioka did experience traffic throughout
the city, but it was well directed and no chaos ensued. A total of 269
temporary sightseeing buses stopped at the festival, 5,300 cars came to park in
the prepared spaces for the festival, and shuttle buses ran a total of 345
times to and from the festival grounds to the parking lot carrying a whopping
12,756 people back and forth throughout the weekend. A total of 62 people
visited the first aid stations; 10 people were transported by ambulance due to
heat stroke.
（Morioka Times 5/28/2012）
