Every year, the city of Nagasaki celebrates the Chinese New Year with a spectacular array of bright and colourful lanterns. It began this year on February 7 and continues until the 21st.
The event recreates a ritual in the Edo Period when the goddess of safe voyage named Maso was carried from a Chinese ship that arrived in Nagasaki to Toji Temple.
Nagasaki, which for a couple of hundred years of the Tokugawa shogunate was one of the few entry points for trade in Japan (under the sakoku laws), shows its foreign influences all over, no more so than in its sizeable Chinatown, and the crowds throng around here, Chuo-Koen and Minato-Koen, where the main displays are.
On Sunday, an image of the goddess was laid on a portable shrine (mikoshi) and was carried from a facility at Kannai, Nagasaki, to Kofukuji Temple by participants dressed in flamboyant traditional Chinese outfits, while firecrackers were let off during the procession.
"Life is like a voyage. The goddess will bring you fortune,"
Another parade that will bring the goddess back on the same track will be held this coming Sunday.
The Nagasaki Lantern Festival will last until Feb. 21.
On Sunday, an image of the goddess was laid on a portable shrine (mikoshi) and was carried from a facility at Kannai, Nagasaki, to Kofukuji Temple by participants dressed in flamboyant traditional Chinese outfits, while firecrackers were let off during the procession.
"Life is like a voyage. The goddess will bring you fortune,"
Another parade that will bring the goddess back on the same track will be held this coming Sunday.
The Nagasaki Lantern Festival will last until Feb. 21.
