Samurai Festival in Sydney 2016
A group of Samurai students visiting Australia from Minami Soma City, Fukushima Prefecture.
In early August, eight Samurai came to Sydney from Japan to take part in the Samurai Festival in Sydney. A variety of Samurai performances were displayed on stages in Manly Scenic Walkway and Martin Place, attracting large audiences and media attention.
The Samurai were high school students of Minami Soma City, Fukushima Prefecture who were affected by the tsunami and nuclear plant accident due to the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011.
Minami Soma City has a traditional 1,000 year-old Samurai festival, called Soma Nomaoi, considered an important intangible cultural asset by the central government of Japan. It is part of traditional samurai culture and has been continually celebrated since the Warring States Period. As Soma Nomaoi is a shrine ritual festival, the general public rarely get involved.
As a result, students started an event, the Samurai Festival, which incorporates a style more familiar to the general public in May, 2015.
This festival allows participants to wear rental armour to join battles, or to make their own armor at a workshop. In the Samurai Village attractions, you can take photos of participants in real armour, watch Samurai dramas, and hang out with costume players.
This is a Samurai festival for the younger generation which is a bit different from Soma Nomaoi. Their purpose is to help promote tourism by performing traditional samurai battles and introducing samurai culture inside and outside Japan to help revitalise Minami Soma.
In the Samurai Festival in Sydney one could also see a few rescue volunteers who headed to the north east of Japan for investigation and rescue activities after the Great East Japan Earthquake.
NSW Fire Brigade helped coordinate the stage in Martin Place and invited students to the rescue fire boat, treating them with a cruise around Sydney bay.
Students of Minami Soma City, Fukushima Prefecture visited Sydney with a strong will to spread their local samurai traditional culture across the world to establish a foothold for the revitalization of Fukushima. They completed their mission brilliantly.
The Samurai Festival is annually held in May, and Soma Nomaoi is held in Minami Soma City, Fukushima Prefecture in August every year. Why don’t you come and see the passionate samurai performance in Fukushima?
