Aoba-an Stories | Men of the Sea

It’s just my opinion — but I’ll stand by it: men of the sea are built different.

I’d been back in Canada, key to Aoba-an handed to Michika — my neighbor and co-caretaker — and Kanada-san still on call after a year of shepherding old houses back to life with me, tweaking and coaxing Aoba-an to fully become what it was meant to be: a guest house that holds people well.

Flight booked for July 2nd — but Bryan’s updates about the seven-year festival pushed me to fly back early. When you belong to Wakasa-wan, even just by choice, you show up.

I arrived in time to watch the smallest girls dance in temple courtyards, tiny jumps and twirls to the haunting sweetness of side flutes. Michika and her friend Kobayashi-san — local Yakult legend and domino player of side alleys — led me through back streets to where the real battle pulsed: the taiko drumming.

Listen — this isn’t polite festival music. This is a thunder that strips your mind. One after another, men with arms like ship ropes and drums like temple bells strike rhythms so fierce they punch your ribs from the inside. I could taste sweat in the air, smell the iron heat of raw power. You don’t think about your to-do list here — you forget your name for a while.

These drummers aren’t conservatory trained. They’re men of the sea, the mountains, and the fire. Raised on oily fish, sunburns, rough surf. Nothing delicate — except their unspoken discipline, which holds it all together. It’s a different species than the urban man who trades this for subways, desks, and lattes.

Then the warriors appear. The makeup tricks you: a red slash of liner, tied hair — soft at first glance. But slowly, like a kabuki scene turned feral, they draw real weapons — spears, katanas, even an umbrella used to kill, not keep off rain. No songs of spring here: these are kill strokes, practiced for centuries. The battle cries are sharp, real. I swear the road trembles under them.

Too soon it ends. Sweat cools. The women rush in with somen, beer, and sweet-sour pickles — fuel for the next round.

If I could have, I would have hunted a moose right then and eaten its heart raw. But maybe that’s a Canadian version of the same feeling you get watching Rocky for the first time — chest full, eyes wild, wanting to run stairs or punch something noble.

These men are proof: real brotherhood is not dead. The warrior spirit, the artist’s discipline, the raw physical edge — it lives, right here among fishermen and shrine drummers.

I could hear Daisan’s growl behind my eyes as I left:

“Put down the screens, boys.

Re-forge your priorities.

Stand shoulder to shoulder again.

Become men — like these.”

⸻

Haiku:

海の鼓

男の汗と声

七年祭

Sea drums —

men’s sweat and voices,

seven-year festival.