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About the Ihatov Festival
Kenji Miyazawa is one of Japan’s best-known children’s authors and poets, who created a number of wonderful works.
The Ihatov Festival is held in Hanamaki, Iwate Prefecture, where Kenji Miyazawa was born. Every year, a rich variety of guests, especially creators and artists working in many fields that suggest a connection to his works, take part, presenting talks, live performances, readings, plays and other performing arts, along with movie presentations. The festival is a place to enjoy the connections with the world of Kenji’s works, with all their diverse appeal.
The Ihatov Festival first started in 2013 with the cooperation of the late Isao Takahata, the Studio Ghibli director, who supported the idea behind the festival. Takahata was the director of “Gauche the Cellist,” an animated movie based on Kenji Miyazawa’s work, along with many other works that were closely aligned with Kenji’s spirit. Each year, the festival starts on or around Kenji’s birthday, August 27, and thousands of people from Hanamaki and further afield come to the outdoor venue, surrounded by greenery, in the Miyazawa Kenji Dowa Mura (Village of Fairy Tales) in Hanamaki. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic caused the festival to be canceled in both 2020 and 2021. This year, the first festival in three years, will carry all video programs both in person and online to spread them more widely, creating a new format for art and culture.
ABOUT
Ihatov Festival 2022
〜The World Redrawn with Kenji Miyazawa〜
The environment which our society finds itself in has changed greatly these past few years, and daily life continues to move at a dizzying pace. Furthermore, our lifestyles too have been forced to change in a number of ways. On the other hand, we have the power to imagine the future. As Kenji Miyazawa once depicted Ihatov, how we depict our future today could have the power to change our lifestyles into something more prosperous. Along with the six programs over two days, each Ihatov will spread throughout Hanamaki and beyond.
Free entry
*The event will not be canceled due to rain, but it will be canceled in case of severe weather conditions.
*This year, visitors will be able to enjoy pre-recorded video shown on a large screen set up on the outdoor stage. There will not be any live performances.
- Dates
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Saturday, August 27 and Sunday, August 28, 2022
- Times
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Performances start at 18:30, end at 20:30 (scheduled)
- Venue
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Miyazawa Kenji Dowa Mura (Village of Fairy Tales)
26-19 Takamatsu, Hanamaki City, Iwate Prefecture, 025-0014［GoogleMap］
Free shuttle bus
Free shuttle buses will operate between the temporary parking sites (Hanamaki Nitobe Memorial Hall, Yazawa Baseball Ground) and the venue.
| Temporary parking (Hanamaki Nitobe Memorial Hall, Yazawa Baseball Ground) ⇄ Venue (approx. 10 minutes) |
|---|
| To venue: leaving temporary parking at 16:00
Return: leaving venue at 16:15 （The buses will shuttle between stops every 30 minutes.） |
| The last bus leaves the venue at 21:15. |
*The 18:15 Depart Venue and the 19:00 Depart Parking buses are canceled
*The bus timetable is subject to minor variations depending on road conditions, etc.
The Dowa Mura Forest Illuminations 2022 are currently being held
Period: Weekends and public holidays until Sunday, October 30
(Daily between Saturday, August 6 and Sunday, August 14, and between Friday, September 16 and Sunday, September 25)
©MIRRORBOWLERS
ORGANIZER: Kenji Festival Executive Committee
SPONSORS: Iwate Nippo, Asahi Shimbun Morioka General Bureau, Mainichi Shimbun Morioka Bureau, Yomiuri Shinbun Morioka Bureau, Sankei Shimbun Morioka Branchi Breau , KAHOKU SHIMPO PUBLISHING CO, Iwate Nichinichi Shimbun, Japan Broadcasting Corporation Morioka Station, Iwate Broadcasting,Co.,Ltd., TELEVISION IWATE CORP., Iwate Menkoi Television Co.，Ltd, Iwate Asahi Television Co.,Ltd., FM Iwate, Hanamaki Cable Television, Morioka Times, Community Radio Station FM Hanamaki
Program planning and production: Arika Okubo Event operation and production: Goichi Misumi
Online broadcasts
The videos will be broadcast free of charge on YouTube simultaneously with the event screenings on festival days.
*Videos screened/broadcast on the day are scheduled to be available for archive viewing for a limited period after the event.
MOVIE
“Night on the Galactic Railroad” musical and “Matasaburo of the Wind in Dance and Music Poetry” from Warabi-za’s Summer Special Performance 2022
“Kenji Miyazawa Travidebla”
“A World Flickering in a Bonfire”
“Deer Dance” folk performance
“Record Concert from a Century Hence”
“A Map of Ihatov: A landscape reflected in the soul”
PROGRAM
Saturday, August 27
“Night on the Galactic Railroad” musical and “Matasaburo of the Wind in Dance and Music Poetry” from Warabi-za’s Summer Special Performance 2022
Warabi-za, which received the 2020 Kenji Miyazawa Award and Ihatov Award, will present their public performances of their musical numbers, “Night on the Galactic Railroad” and “Matasaburo of the Wind in Dance and Music Poetry.”
“Kenji Miyazawa Travidebla”
We do not know what happened in the distant past. How did people live each day? What sceneries did they encounter? What did they consider beautiful? We do not know the truth. That is why we shall imagine the era in which Kenji Miyazawa lived through the poetry notes he left behind.
One of the words Kenji Miyazawa pursued throughout his life was “transparency.” In Esperanto, this is “travidebla.”
This performance uses this “transparency” as its theme to set a soundtrack to poetry notes.
Shuta Hasunuma
“A World Flickering in a Bonfire”
Yoshitomo Nara is an artist who creates works freely, unbound by anything. The world is his stage, and he is beloved for his works that transcend the boundaries of words, cultural backgrounds, and generations. Nara is also a traveler, so he will talk at length on the connections with the world depicted by Kenji Miyazawa and what he feels when facing nature as we must all do now, while surrounded by the calls of birds and insects in the Hanamaki woods, in front of the wavering dim light of a bonfire.
Sunday, August 28
“Deer Dance” folk performance
Students in the Deer Dance Club at Iwate Prefectural Hanamaki Agricultural School (now Hanamaki Agricultural High School) where Kenji Miyazawa once taught will perform a “Shishi-Odori” or “Deer Dance.” There are several theories about the origins of the deer dance, but it started from memorial services for deer, evolving into a performing art that transformed prayers for good harvests into a dance. Wearing sasara, or white bamboo horns, and a costume that weighs a total of around 15 kg, the students dance while beating drums.
“Record Concert from a Century Hence”
Composition/Arrangement: Marihiko Hara
Kenji Miyazawa wrote “The Train” and “Natural Allure” (collected in “Spring and the Demon”) on August 17, 1922. They will be performed and recorded in Hanamaki on August 17, 2022, precisely 100 years later. The world of a hundred years ago may seem distant, but if we shift the dial by 100 years towards “the direction sensed as the past” then perhaps reaching his life is not so distant after all. The music performed today becomes the sound of wind, or the sound of something, allowing us to dream of floating, even for an instant, within Kenji’s inner vision.
Marihiko Hara
Kenji Miyazawa tunes are also scheduled to be performed by Marihiko Hara and others.
“A Map of Ihatov: A landscape reflected in the soul”
Kitaro Kosaka is one of Japan’s top animators who helped bring many of Studio Ghibli’s masterpieces to life. While talking with Kosaka, known for his unparalleled love of cycling, we will also cycle freely around Hanamaki in summer. Going beyond the boundaries of what we can see and what we cannot, this “voyage to sketches of an inner vision” depicts spreading landscapes in a picture diary.
