It has to be carp. The Hiroshima Carp are racing at the top of the Central League, after all. At the Palaceside Building, too, the seasonal carp streamers are “swimming” briskly in the atrium on the first floor and first basement (photo above). You already know the display. Only today (May 1) and tomorrow (the 2nd) remain. For the latter half of the holiday, the 3rd–6th, the building is closed on flag days, so the carp “close shop” a little early.
The carp streamers are shown every year at this time by the Palaceside Building Meitinkai (chair Yoaki Okada, president of Sakae Inc., which runs Tea Room Hana), a volunteer group of restaurants and shops in the building, so people can touch a seasonal Japanese custom. This is the seventh year.
The carp and warrior streamers are masterworks of the Watanabe Dye Shop, a kon’ya in Gujo Hachiman designated an intangible cultural property of Gifu Prefecture; the commentary this year is especially full. Five panels stand in the center of the first-basement passage, with photos and explanations on both sides (photo at left below). In brief, the dyeing uses Gujo honzome methods handed down for more than 400 years: cloth with patterns drawn by hand in rice-paste resist is dipped again and again in a vat of indigo, wood ash, lime and wheat gluten, then rinsed in winter in the Yoshida River that runs through the center of Gujo Hachiman. The deep colors are the charm.
Warrior streamers are up again this year. Their commentary is also on the panels; the photo at right is Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s Takamatsu flooding. Hideyoshi is upper center, Masanori Fukushima behind to the right
, and Kiyomasa Kato in front. It was a campaign against the Mori on Oda Nobunaga’s orders; after the Honno-ji Incident they made peace before the Mori learned of it and raced back to Kyoto — the “Chugoku Ogaeshi.” The other warrior streamer is the Battle of Kawanakajima between Shingen Takeda and Kenshin Uesugi; both involve water, perhaps because the pictures want the blue of water.