Chonoroku hebi

Tonight, Koyuki is the most beautiful girl in Japan, and the world, even. She’s 19 years old, clad in a red kimono, and has big eyes anchored by tasty cheekbones. Right now, she is eating a snake, a real one, taking bites out of it like it was a licorice whip. The audience gasps, repulsed. A second later, they are screaming.

Koyuki has tossed out her half-eaten viper into the center of the crowd. But it’s only a rubber snake, a cheap gag. And the rubes fell for it, as they have for centuries. Koyuki smiles mischievously - only a little, mind you - and nods her head asking for our indulgence.

She goes back to eating her snake, the real one.

Sounds strange, but what she’s doing is situation-appropriate. It’s Wednesday night and there’s a festival at Hanazono temple, a Shinto shrine for business people, entertainers, pimps and con men too probably. After all, the temple is next to Shinjuku Kabuki-cho and when you have to take a whiz, they tell you to go use the public stalls in Golden Gai.

Outside, Yasukuni-dori is crowded with tekiya stalls selling yakitori, taco yaki, okonomiyaki, and that most traditional of festival beverages: overpriced beer. The latter can be had any night of the year, but the former never tastes better than during the festival. But we didn't come here for the booze and the chow. We want to get freaked out.

Outside the tent, the barker – an old woman looking like Takeshi Kitano with tits – eggs us on, selling up the New Face in the show. She’s a bijin! She’s even been in a newspaper and was photographed for Shonen Jump magazine! To out right is an enormous, glorious old painted mural of a woman in white, a hideous snake around her neck. She looks nothing like Koyuki, but that’s who it’s supposed to be. To the barker’s left is a tiny metal cage. A white poodle in a tutu lies on its stomach inside. Mondo Cane.

800 yen a peek. Pay after the show. We shuffle into the tent. Inside, a pair of old middle aged women are holding a mummified two-headed calf.

“Yeah, we saw that last year,” says Slasher, and indeed we did, but being the suckers we are, we keep coming back. It’s the same basic setup as before: stage with faded red curtain, audience standing on a rickety elevated piece of wood. What looks like the barker’s sister doing announcing duties inside.

Oh, and there are snakes. Handfuls of poisonous vipers, a colossal boa constrictor slithers across the floor, and dried scales are handed out for luck. Dinner is made out of at least one of them.

The grand finale: an old woman with drag queen makeup, a veteran of the freak scene and Koyuki’s sempai, puts a bib on. She wads up a dozen or so white candles in her hand and ignites the wicks until there’s a tiny inferno in her palm. Then she pours the hot wax into her mouth. No expression on her haggard corpse-like face. Then she places the candles in front of her mouth and blows. A Gene Simmons sized jet of flame erupts. It’s cold outside, but the force of the blast briefly cooks us.

Later, we sit at a yakitori stand and dig the real-time yakuza movie unfolding around us. Clouds of smoke and steam. Tall bottles of sake and beer. Tourists, old people, a crowd of hosts, couples, and an endless supply of yakuza. A festival in Shinjuku means the kuroshakai will crawl out of their bars, dens, and dives, and parade around the temple, pausing – along with the commoners - to throw money at the shrine.

A single security guard passes by. “Look at that loser,” says Slasher. “He knows he can’t do shit here.” Then he breaks it down.

Yakuza type A favors expensive suits, diamond watches, and sunglasses at night. Two fat cats, massive with an air of menace, sit behind us. As they enter the tent, the tekiya owner does his best bowing and mincing. Yakuza type B lives in a cheap jogging suit, like something you’d get at Mervyns. These are the tekiya mostly, the guys running the booths and stalls. Both types saunter around clutching little briefcases full of cash. I see at least one hand off go down for real, sense dozens more around me.

It’s a fucking gangster Sim City, but the V-Cinema cameras never come out. Everyone is on the best behavior. Much bowing and yelling ensues whenever members of different castes meet and greet each other.

“Goddamn, it’s a fucking yakuza zoo,” I say.

Slasher is quick to make corrections. “Hey, don’t call them that here…” Instead, we refer to them henceforth as They Who Must Not Be Named. Several cups of hot sake later, we have to let our hens out. Karaoke in Kabuki-cho. We stay until 6am, at which point Cage says he’s going to go get a massage.

It’s the usual long burn out ride back home, mouth like an ashtray, dreading the moment I’ll have to wake up: knowing it will feel like someone hit me in the face with a baseball bat. It’s pretty much like this every other night.

But Koyuki? She probably has it much worse. I mean, how many snakes do you have to eat exactly before your sempai is satisfied?

Comments

[Steve Harrison]

I think what I take away from this is that Slasher, for all his rebel cool vibe,still at heart will conform to Japanese traditional public mores...or maybe it's just common sense and self preservation.

To Reference 'Kentucky Fried Movie', one does not shout 'nigger' in the back alleys of Detroit with impunity... ;)

There's a part of me that wishes for an 'Otaku' freakshow at a festival like this...instead of the bearded woman and two headed calf... "SEE! The amazing PLAMO! He can build a model kit in mere moments! SEE! an Otaku that actually went out on a date! SEE! A GIRL!REALLY!"

What's that thing where different prefectures have local shrines they parade thru the streets with much chanting and drinking and stuff? It would be great to see groups of otaku carrying shrines to Tomino, Nishizaki, Matsumoto, Anno, Takahasi (both Rumiko and the guy who did Votoms) and the like engage in drunken brawling and the need to call in the Riot Police...

I wallow in sickness...

[Carl Horn]

I often get the impression fans in America give them more respect than fans in Japan. Convention guests coming over here speak often of our charming naivete. I would say "naïveté," but it would somehow defeat the sense of the word.

Now by contrast Milwaukie, OR is not a shrine town, but I saw there Friday evening an extraordinary style of public urination, one with which I was not previously familiar, despite having worked in San Francisco for nine years.

Around eleven P.M. two young men were crossing the intersection of Main & Monroe about twenty feet before my car, when that telltale golden stream began to issue forth from the one walking behind. Except that he kept walking steadily and appeared fully clothed from my vantage. It occurred to me that he must have opened his fly and placed it at the ready sometime earlier.

His pace never slackened and he did not appear to mind the way the urine fountained back upon his pants and jacket, aided by a steady southern breeze that had been blowing since early that evening. The man walking before him did not appear to notice the events behind, and it is possible I remain the only witness.

[Steve Harrison]

Carl, you're right..in Japan they would not worship the creators, but the creations. And that brings to mind, wasn't there a blurb in Animerica years back about a Gundam shrine marched in some festival? I assume that, if true, that would have been more the product of Bandai's marketing staff than anything else...

Oh, but the image of shrines with the giant heads of Mazinger Z and Evangelion, a big Yamato made from flowers, a catgirl maid in an Anne Miller's uniform with triple D cup boobies...aarrggh! OH! HEADACHE!

On the amazing walking wizz man. Um. Dude. That's wrong in so many, many ways...how did you manage to keep yourself from shouting "HEY! YOU'RE PISSING IN THE WIND!"..ah..yes...common sense and self preservation.. :)