KOCHI -- Yosakoi Matsuri, a dance festival dating back more than 60 years that is one of the highlights of summer in Kochi, saw its first foreign team participate last year.
Called Yosakoi Europe United Team Riku-Ryoku-Kyoshin, which means "joining forces to form a united team," the foreign team drew crowds as its members wore costumes with a white motif and based its performance on European folk dances.
The team's leader is 29-year-old Janna Carleson, who lives in Stockholm. Carleson said that after she finished the first performance, she cried because she was so nervous.
Carleson came to love Yosakoi while she was studying at Tohoku University. In the spring of 2016, she called on 20 people from 10 countries whom she'd met through social media to "dance in Kochi, the home of Yosakoi."
They shared the choreography over the internet, but it was not until they were on stage before the audience in Kochi that all the members gathered together for the first time.
Carleson didn't want to give a half-baked performance, fearing the organizers wouldn't want them back. Many people approached them about their dancing, which Carleson said was possibly because many members were tall, making them stand out more.
Yosakoi Matsuri is currently held from Aug. 9 to 12. It began in 1954 mainly due to the efforts of the Kochi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which was hoping to raise people's spirits after World War II and vitalize the local shopping streets in Kochi.
In 1992, a Hokkaido University student who attended the festival devised the Yosakoi-Soran Matsuri festival -- a mixture of the Yosakoi dance with Soranbushi, a traditional Hokkaido folk song. That caused Yosakoi dance to become popular throughout Japan. The Yosakoi dance is now performed at about 200 festivals and on other occasions, according to a survey by the Kochi city government.
The dance's popularity stems from its "freedom." There are only three regulations for the festival:
-- Hold a naruko small percussion instrument while dancing
-- Include part of a musical piece titled "Yosakoi Naruko Odori" into the music for the dances performed by individual teams
-- Prepare one Jigatasha truck with gaudy decorations that emits music and leads the dancers
The participants are allowed to arrange the choreography, music and costumes.
Initially, the "regular" style for the dancers comprised yukata and happi, based on Japanese traditional dance, but this evolved as more and more dancers adopted popular music like samba, rock and hip hop. The costumes became more colorful with the appearance of hanten short coats or kimono arranged in a more Western style.
"Everyone's power to really fire up this festival is tremendous," said Eri Hamada, 34, a doctor in Kochi. "I never get tired of seeing the various costumes teams come up with every year."
Hamada is a member of the famous Honiya team and has danced at the festival almost every year since she was a high school student. "I like the feeling of achievement from creating a performance in cooperation with other members. Every participant can be a hero," she said.
Through video sites and other means, Yosakoi became popular worldwide, especially in Southeast Asia and Europe.
The Kochi prefectural government established a system to certify the leader of foreign teams and others as "Yosakoi ambassadors." Carleson is one of 42 ambassadors from 13 countries.
In addition, the Kochi prefectural government, Yosakoi Matsuri Shinko-kai (Yosakoi festival promotion association) and other entities began the 2020 Yosakoi de Oen project executive committee in March last year. The committee aims to perform the Yosakoi dance at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics to make Yosakoi known worldwide.
Yosakoi ambassador Verlinton Waldo, 30, who lives in Jakarta, said Yosakoi goes beyond a traditional dance. Yosakoi will develop into a new style with a mixture of other countries' cultures, such as those of Vietnam and Indonesia, he said.
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