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| 川崎市民祭り |
Today I will introduce you to a Turk who does one of my
dream jobs. He moved to Japan seven years ago and is now running a
Yokohama-based Cultural Festival Tourism Company. If you don't speak Japanese
but you want a real and unforgettable Japan holiday by experiencing interesting
festivals all over Japan, Mesut Doğan is the one to call.
Özlem Burcu: Welcome to my page, Mr. Doğan. First of all, I must
say that you are doing an enviable job for a writer like me who loves researching
and concentrates on cultural exchange projects. The power of the festivals are
bringing people together and miraculously making them get closer. Is that what
happened to you? Can you tell us about your first festival?
Mesut Dogan: Hello, Ms. Burcu. First of all, I greet your readers on your
page. And thank you very much for the interview. I agree with you, the
traditional cultural festivals are an excellent opportunity. Especially in
Japan, which has a homogenous society that is closed to the outside world, they
are really a miracle as you mentioned. The first festival I attended was
TaikoMatsuri on an island with a summer resort called Shodoshima.
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| 小豆島 First festival I attended at Shodoshima - Taiko Matsuri |
I am apologizing from readers that I will begin from the
beginning. After falling in love with my wife in Izmir, we moved to Japan and
first lived in Tokyo for the first three years. Generally, when you are living
abroad, the period of getting used to the new country is between three and six
months. Japan is different. It was a very difficult process to adapt to Japan.
After a very busy process of learning Japanese after the age of thirty, and almost
immediately after that a career that nearly started from scratch. While I was
working in a 5 star hotel in Tokyo, I got a job offer from Setonaikai that is a
region famous for its olives in Japan and similarity to the Aegean region of
Turkey. In April we moved to Shodoshima, the largest island in the region. I
was involved in the reconstruction of a local group of hotels. We moved in
April, time passed, it was early September and still I couldn’t meet anyone on
this little island, I couldn’t socialize. When I brought it up with the boss, he
said that there was a local cultural festival and that it would be useful to
attend.
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| 深川水かけまつり Matsuri with my daughter, Sakura and my son, Kaya |
It was my fourth year in the country, I didn't have much hope, but I
got up early on the morning of the Festival and went to the gathering area.
They mounted two thick poles with a length of ten meters to a wooden structure
horizontally from the left and right. There were four boys in it, the clothes
looked like our “janizary”, they were muttering a prayer and were beating in a
slow rhythm with the mallets in their hands. More than a hundred of men were taking
turns to carry this structure together on their shoulders. It weighed about two
tons. Anyone who saw me, thought I was an alien, looked at my face with a confused
expression, and I was more confused than them. What was that?!I was in shock!.
I didn’t understand the purpose of it, why it's done. After the first shock, I
introduced myself and started doing what they were doing. I started to carry
with them the structure they called “Taiko”. As the hours passed, I managed to
communicate with the people of the island who I couldn’t get close to for
months and even made proggress. In the afternoon there was almost nobody who
didn’t know who I was and many of them became my friends.
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| 小豆島 First festival I attended in Shodoshima |
After the festival,
my life on the island gained another dimension. I was accepted, and known. Once
the people who ignored my greeting on the road, now calling me by my name. At a
dizzying speed I suddenly existed in this homogeneous and closed society. They
knew where I was from and my name now. It was an indescribable feeling and pleasure
for me.
Özlem Burcu: Is the reason that you started this business because
of your experiences at the festival?
Mesut Doğan: Yes. I attended the festival again in the
second year. This time I knew everyone, and
I was experienced, but I saw a group of six or seven people for the
first time. They didn’t greet me or even speak with me. I wondered and
investigated who these people were. I learned that they were part-time
employees who were called from another city for the festival. I was surprised.
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| 小豆島2nd year Shodoshima Taiko Matsuri |
The festival is passion, enthusiasm, purification,
forgetting, learning, joy, but I never thought it could be a part-time job.
Then that day I confronted the social and economic realities of present-day
Japan. Japan is a very old country, more than fifty percent of Japanese culture
will disappear in thirty years, as modern society is now urban and
sociologically new.
Then I said we should call for volunteers. They should have
fun and help the cultural festivals to continue. Japanese people from different
regions or tourists from inside or outside the country. I started getting
interested in Japanese festivals. Then I started researching and it turned into
a hobby, and one day the biggest airline in the country was knocking on my
door. They said they were planning to establish a Festival Tourism website and
wanted me as an advisor. Another one asked me to organize a tour. Interview
offers, and even national television programs... I have read dozens of books in
two years and attended nearly three hundred festivals. This is how SuperMatsuri
started its adventure in Japan.
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| 上総一ノ宮十二社祭り TENGU |
Özlem Burcu: Can you give us information about SuperMatsuri? In
what porpose people can apply to your company?
Mesut Doğan: SuperMatsuri is a Cultural Festival Tour and
Event Organization company. It’s stillin its infancy. Our company consists of
me and two employees. We organize tours and activities for visitors interested
in Japan and Japanese culture, where they can experience festivals. We provide
Translation and Consultancy services to local public institutions and
organizations. In 2020, we will start organizing events to promote Japanese
Cultural Festivals and Traditional Handicraft products abroad. For example, we
will have Nippon Culture and Art Fair 2020 in İzmir Historical Gas Factory
Culture Center on May 30-31, 2020.
Özlem Burcu: Japan is a country with plenty of festivals. What are
the most popular festivals by season?
Mesut Doğan: Yes, like you said Ms. Burcu, there are a lot
of festivals in this culture. Over 300,000 festivals. Except for the Obon
(extremely hot and humid season in July and August), several festivals are held
in Japan every weekend. The festivals are divided into seasons as you
mentioned.
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| ふるさと祭り東京 with my son, Kaya - Aomori Nebuta Festival.jpg |
In Summer, the Nebuta Festival in the city of Aomori that is
in the northern part of the country.
In Spring, Sakura (Cherry blossom watching and picnicking)
Festivals.
In Autumn, Omikoshi (Portable Shrine) at Kanda Shinto Shrine
in Tokyo and Danjiri Festival in Kishiwada in Osaka.
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| 秩父夜祭 chichibu Yomatsuri |
In winter, ChichibuYomatsuri in Chichibu City in
Saitama Province, north of Tokyo, and Somin Festival at Kokuseki Shrine in
Iwate Province, in the north of the country.
These are world-knowned festivals that come to my mind right
now and many of them have also entered the list of UNESCO World Cultural
Heritage.
Özlem Burcu: In which languages do you conduct your tours?
Mesut Doğan: We are making our tours in English, Japanese
and Turkish for now. We will be providing tour services in Chinese, French and
Spanish as soon as possible.
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| ふるさと祭り東京Haiya Odori |
Özlem Burcu: For example, I want to attend the Koshi Fire Festival
in March. When do you step in? What does the tour program cover?
Mesut Doğan: When you tell us about your wishes to
participate in any Festival, we request your identification and travel
information immediately.
In addition, we start our processing immediately after
completing our form which tells us about what stages of your travel you want
services from us. First of all, we inform your partners in the festival
organizing committee about your participation and experience. After approval,
our guests are informed about the conditions and details. When details of
travel and festival attendance are determined and agreed upon, the contract and
payment process takes place.
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| 牛深ハイヤTokyo Nihon Odori Festival |
I would like to mention here that each festival has its own
rules and conditions. Some organizations may be flexible, taking into account
the current conditions, but some festivals pay close attention to strict rules.
As an example, Omikoshi (Portable Shrine) is carried on the
shoulders and in the past it was forbidden for women to participate or even
touch it, but now they can participate if they meet the minimum requirements
for women.
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| 2019.2.11 黒石寺蘇民祭 Somin Festival |
Another example is
the Somin Festival. Certainly, women's participation is not possible.
Participants have to enter a strict VEGAN diet a week before the festival.
Özlem Burcu: Tourists not only buy package tours, but they can
also prepare their own tour programs. Can you talk about the process?
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| 寄居Samurai Festivali |
Mesut Doğan: In today's conditions, I think that package
tour sales and classic Tour operator working model are over. It is no longer
satisfactory, to give money to the agencies for small tour organizations where
visitors can simply make from their own smart phones.
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| 上総一ノ宮十二社祭りStewen from Hawaii and Me |
Visitors not only want to see, they also want to experience,
explore, challenge and immediately share on social media. In our model, our
visitors imform us the date they will visit, the number of people, the content
they want to see and experience. Then we create the tour program with our
visitors from the drafts we prepared. Our visitor pays us not for the train
ticket or the hotel where he will stay, but for our companionship, friendship,
experience and guidence. After agreeing on the details and plan with our guest,
we proceed to the contract and payment stage. After the payment process is
finished we accompany him on his journey to the end of the activity experience.
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| 匝瑳市Çiba Mizukake Matsuri ( water festival and my first tour) |
Özlem Burcu: Thank you for the interview. I am sure that your
company's contribution to Japanese tourism will soon attract attention due to
the convenience they provide for foreign tourists.
