When the cherries end, carp streamers. That is Palaceside Building’s yearly milestone from spring to summer.
Cherries: the Imperial Palace Inui-dori opening ran through April 3, extended three days to ten days, and 508,
000 people came. Especially later, when temperatures rose and the cherries burst, the surge was striking. Palaceside Building, usually closed Sundays, opened specially on the 3rd for the Chiyoda Cherry Festival; many restaurants operated, and people returning from the Imperial Palace stopped by.
The carp streamers, swapping places with falling cherries, appeared at Palaceside Building this week. As every year, black and red carp and warrior banners are up in the central arcade corridor on B1 and the first floor. They delight people who work in the building, dining-street users, and those just passing through.
The Palaceside Building Meitencai (chair Hiroaki Okada, president of Sakae Co., which runs Tea Room Hana), organized by restaurant and shop volunteers, has shown them each year at this time for seven years, to let people touch a seasonal Japanese custom. From first-floor corridor rails and the ceiling hang streamers, black carp, red carp and blue young carp, as if swimming in the central atrium. East of the carp, hanging from the ceiling in the photo above, is a warrior banner. It is 7 meters long; from below the picture is the Battle of Kawanakajima (photo at right). Uesugi Kenshin just cutting at Takeda Shingen — a classic warrior-banner scene. Small carp streamers are also at the entrances of Meitencai member shops (photo below).
These carp and warrior ban-
ners are fine works of Watanabe Dye Shop, a Gujo Hachiman indigo house designated an intangible cultural property of Gifu Prefecture. They are dyed in the Gujo honzome technique passed down more than 400 years: cloth with motifs drawn by hand in rice-paste resist is dipped many times in a vat of indigo, wood ash, lime and wheat gluten, then rinsed in winter in the Yoshida River through the center of Gujo Hachiman. The deep colors are the charm.
The display is planned through Saturday, May 7.