ABSTRACT
The early Edo period saw a proliferation of popular participation in urban festivals. Yanagita Kunio in his book Nihon no matsuri (‘Japanese festivals’) has pointed out the need to distinguish between matsuri and sairei (the former might best be translated here as ‘festival’ and the latter as ‘spectacle’), and he has examined the process whereby the former transmutes into the latter. According to Yanagita, the shift took place when the crowd emerged as mere observers rather than active participants in the events. He saw the influence of urban culture since the medieval period as a major causal factor here.
