fox's wedding / 狐の嫁入り
Shinkawa Market Festival in Ube, Japan / 新川市まつり、宇部
This event is a ceremony of Shintoism that prays for the good harvest in the region according to holding fox's wedding. The fox is a symbol of the rice plant.
But Fox 's wedding is not the traditional ceremony of this region, Ube. In a word, planners of this event copied the ceremony in other regions in Japan.
Local communities in Japan have collapsed in the process of the modernization and individualization. And recent Japanese people might try to regain or restructure their lost local identities. One of the way is to copy famous and attractive local events in other regions. But..., it is difficult to restructure the community that has collapsed once.