A tradition of change: A history of Chita dashimatsuri, 1600--2005

The Chita peninsula in central Japan is famous for dashimatsuri , festivals featuring massive, wheeled floats called dashi . The material culture and ritual process of festivals ( matsuri) are often represented as unchanging "folk" material culture and social praxis. In contradiction to views of matsuri as reservoirs of culturally continuous "tradition," I argue that shifts in dashimatsuri architecture, iconography and ritual from the Edo period (1600-1868) through recent decades have reflected and influenced broader ideological debates and social changes.;After an ethnographic and material sketch of the contemporary Shiohimatsuri in the first chapter, I suggest that the current idealization of dashimatsuri as "traditional" belies their recurrent historical reinvention. The second chapter examines the political uses of dashi by competing imperial and warlord rulers from the Heian period (794-1185) through the civil wars of the 15th and 16th century. Early documentary and visual representations of dashimatsuri reveal their involvement in political power struggles rather than communal observation of shared religious beliefs.;The third chapter analyzes the legitimation of Tokugawa rule through dashimatsuri sponsorship, and the ideological and iconographic challenge to samurai supremacy by merchant festival patrons. Late Edo dashimatsuri participants contested the hegemony of both warrior and commoner elites. In contrast to interpretations of matsuri as traces of a pre-modern village community, I argue that conflicting status ideologies and class interests were negotiated in the public realm of Edo festivity.;The fourth chapter examines the Meiji (1868-1912) official disciplining of festivity through the construction of State Shinto, and the early 20th-century reinvention of dashimatsuri as local expressions of popular nationalism. Dashi iconography and ritual reflected and reinforced discourses of national cultural exceptionalism and colonialism.;The fifth chapter sketches dashimatsuri's postwar decline and recent repackaging as commodified "tradition." The ongoing reinvention of dashimatsuri in the interests of domestic cultural tourism plays into a resurgent and contested cultural nationalism.;Material and ritual changes in dashimatsuri illustrate the malleability and multiplicity of meanings associated with putatively "traditional" material culture and social praxis. This dissertation contributes to the recent questioning of essentialized notions of cultural continuity by historians of vernacular architecture and Japanese visual culture.