Money Makes the World Go Round
January 2020 (3 min read)
Money, money, money. At the Ebisu festival in Osaka, Japan’s city of merchants and its third largest, you got to spend money to make it. Ebisu is the rotund, smiley-faced God of fishermen, commerce and luck, and during the Festival the Japanese buy offerings that will help guarantee a prosperous year ahead. The most intricate (like the one pictured above) cost upwards of a thousand American dollars. I’d dearly like one of those, but have to be content with an inexpensive fukusasa, a bamboo branch with a trinket attached.
We’re with Andy Kenji Marsden, an Australian with a Japanese mother, who now lives in Osaka and runs nightly tours. Without him, we’d have missed this festival entirely. “You’ve hit the jackpot”, he says when we meet up. Along with hundreds of others, we wander the street stalls that lead up to the Imamiya Ebisu Shrine in central Osaka. It’s 6.30pm on January 9, the first night of the three-day festivities, and there’s a carnival atmosphere, albeit with typical Japanese restraint.
Andy stops at a stall selling crepes on a stick. He orders one for the four of us, which is a good thing as it is rich and cheesy, and there are many other things to taste. Without Andy my family would have behaved like barbarian gaijin and walked on eating our crepe. The Japanese do not walk and eat at the same time. The etiquette is to consume your food in front of whatever place it has been purchased. You can also then hand back whatever rubbish is left over, which is crucial as there are few bins on Japanese streets.
The stalls are called yatai and many of them sell takoyaki, the fried dough ball stuffed with octopus that is the staple of Osakan fast food. There are also mochi balls, yakisoba, chocolate-coated bananas, pork skewers, Kobe beef sticks, fish-shaped pastries filled with sweet red bean paste and much more that I want to try but don’t as our tour concludes with dinner at an Izakaya.
Andy joshes with many of the stall holders, which allows me to take photographs. There are often notices in English asking you not to do that, which can be frustrating given the colourful scenarios. I’m given permission to photograph the man selling a glorious range of Ebisu offerings. The crowds swell the closer we get to Ebbesan, as the shrine is affectionately known in Osaka. The main entrance is marked by a huge banner of a colourful, anime-style fish leaping into waves against a background of Mt Fuji. Before entering the shrine proper, the Japanese faithful pick up a ladle and lightly wash their hands and mouth in ritual purification at the water trough, as is the Shinto custom.
You can buy fukusasa and other small offerings in the shrine itself from the fuku-musume, or daughters of fortune. Fifty young women are selected from over 3,000 hopefuls each year. They tend to be pretty. On January 10, the main night of the Ebisu festival, they give out free charms during the parade of 500 or so local bigwigs and geisha. Tonight, the queue to buy offerings is three-deep at the shrine itself. Dressed in white and gold, the Shinto priests and fuku-musume shimmer under the bright lights.
It seems sacrilegious to throw away such beautiful works of art, but for those people who maybe do not have space in their homes for large Ebisu offerings, there’s a skip in the grounds of the shrine. A middle-aged man tenderly places a large, ornate offering inside and turns away with a rueful expression.
I send off a little message to Ebisu myself. Who knows this could be my lucky year. I might win the lottery or catch a metaphorical fish. I’m a Piscean after all. The final day of Ebisu, on January 11, is called “The Last Helping of Luck”. It’s a long wait to the following year.
EXTRA
The Ebisu Festival is held on January 9 to 11 each year. You can view it in Kyoto and Tokyo, but the biggest party is in Osaka at the Imamiya Ebisu Shrine.
It’s more fun to go with one of the Osaka Backstreet Tour guides, so if you’re going to be in town on those days, book yourself in;
https://backstreetosakatours.com(see my story on the tour itself)