A nightmare. Not the building. A year ago about now the Hiroshima Carp were flying and even sat briefly atop the Central League. This year the advance talk was still higher, and they were listed among favorites…
But it has only just begun. Toward carp season on May 5 one hopes they recover (a personal wish).
At Palaceside Building, regardless of the Carp’s record, the usual carp streamers and warrior banners have again appeared in the atrium of the first-basement and first-floor arcade central corridor. They went up only this Sunday. They delight tenants who work in the building and neighbors who pass through on their commute.
The Palaceside Building Meitencai (chair: Shimada Yukimasa, manager of Japon), organized by volunteers from restaurants and shops in the building, has held a “Carp Streamer Festival” every year for six years so visitors can touch a seasonal Japanese custom.
This year is the seventh.
In the central atrium a streamer, a black carp, a red carp and a blue child carp are arranged as if swimming. Above the east and west Dream Stairs hang warrior banners some seven meters long; on the east and west atrium walls, two panels on the east (photos at left and above) and one on the west (photos at left and below) are dyed cloths with flower patterns and
sheep. Small carp also hang at the entrances of Meitencai shops.
These are Gujo honzome, handed down in Gujo Hachiman, Gifu Prefecture, called a little Kyoto of inner Mino. Watanabe Shokichi of Watanabe Dye Works, a prefectural important intangible cultural property indigo house, dyed them in a technique more than 400 years old. In “kachin-zome,” outlines of glutinous-rice paste and pigments dissolved in soy milk color the cloth; “kanzarashi” rinsing in the cold snowmelt of the Yoshida-gawa is said to tighten the color so it does not fade.
The carp-streamer display is scheduled through Saturday, May 9. On Thursday, April 30 and Friday, May 1, the first 4,000 people who use Meitencai shops on the first basement and first floor will receive original Meitencai rice crackers. Use the poster at right as a landmark and do get one.