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Awa Odori


The Awa Dance Festival ( Awa Odori) is held from 12 to 15 August as part of the Obon festival in Tokushima Prefecture on Shikoku in Japan. Awa Odori is the largest dance festival in Japan, attracting over 1.3 million tourists every year.

Groups of choreographed dancers and musicians known as ren dance through the streets, typically accompanied by the shamisen lute, taiko drums, shinobue flute and the kane bell. Performers wear traditional obon dance costumes, and chant and sing as they parade through the streets.

Awa is the old feudal administration name for Tokushima and odori means dance.

The song associated with Awa Odori is called Awa Yoshikono and is a localised version of the Edo period popular song Yoshikono Bushi. Parts of it are sung, and others are chanted. The origins of the melodic part have been traced to Kumamoto, Kyūshū, but the Awa version came from Ibaraki Prefecture, from where it spread back down to Nagoya and Kansai. The lyrics of the first verse are:

Awa no dono sama hachisuka-kou ga ima ni nokoseshi awa odori - What Awa's Lord Hachisuka left us to the present day is Awa Odori

The song is usually sung at a point in the parade where the dancers can stop and perform a stationary dance - for example a street intersection or in front of the ticketed, amplified stands which are set up at various points around the city. Not every group has a singer, but dancers and musicians will frequently break out into the Awa Yoshikono chant as they parade through the streets:

Odoru ahou ni, Miru ahou, Onaji ahou nara, Odorana son, son

The dancers are fools, The watchers are fools,Both are fools alike so,Why not dance?

The dancers also chant hayashi kotoba call and response patterns such as "Yattosa, yattosa", "Hayatcha yatcha" and "Erai yatcha, erai yatcha", "Yoi, yoi, yoi, yoi". These calls have no semantic meaning, but help to encourage the dancers.

Death row inmates executed for first time under DPJ-led administration

Two death row inmates were executed at the Tokyo Detention Center on July 28, the Justice Ministry has announced.

This is the first time that death row inmates have been hanged in a year and since the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took over the reins of government in September last year.

Justice Minister Keiko Chiba told a subsequent news conference that she was present as the two inmates were hanged at the detention center. She also announced that a study panel will be set up to discuss whether the death penalty should be abolished and that she has instructed ministry bureaucrats to show the execution facility to the media.

Chiba apparently placed priority on fulfilling her duty as justice minister over her belief that the death penalty should be abolished. The Code of Criminal Procedure stipulates that the death penalty must be carried out on the orders of the justice minister.

Chiba was a member of a nonpartisan parliamentary league on the promotion of the abolition of the death penalty. However, she left the organization after she was appointed as justice minister saying, "I'd like to distance myself from the campaign as a member of the executive branch of the government."

The two death row inmates executed on July 28 were Hidenori Ogata, 33, and Kazuo Shinozawa, 59.

In August 2003, Ogata fatally stabbed a 28-year-old man in Saitama Prefecture after getting into a row over a 16-year-old girl he was dating, and strangled a 21-year-old man who came to the scene, according to court rulings.

Shinozawa broke into a jewelry shop in Utsunomiya in June 2000, tied up six employees and set fire to the shop, killing all of them. He then stole 293 jewelry items worth over 140 million yen, according to rulings. He carried out the murder-robbery because he was heavily in debt.

Death row inmates had been executed once every two months on average since then Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama ordered executions in December 2007. However, executions had been suspended since those carried out under then Justice Minister Eisuke Mori on July 28, 2009.

Financial Reform Law Aims to Change Some Ways of Wall Street

On Wednesday, President Obama signed into law the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

BARACK OBAMA: "These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history -- in history."

Together, the changes represent the biggest rewrite of financial rules since the Great Depression. At the heart of the two thousand three hundred pages in the bill are promises to protect average Americans.

Congress agreed to create a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But the Federal Reserve will pay for it. The central bank will budget about five hundred million dollars a year.

Travis Plunkett is legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America, a consumer rights group. He says this new independent office will have a lot of responsibility -- and that is a good thing.

TRAVIS PLUNKETT: "We're going to have one federal consumer financial protection bureau. If it succeeds, people will know it. If it fails, people will know it. And they will try to hold it accountable."

The bureau will set rules for the marketplace and enforce existing laws. One goal is to keep home buyers from getting bigger loans than they can pay for. But two areas where the bureau will not have power is over auto lenders or banks with assets of less than ten billion dollars.

Financial interests spent millions fighting the bill. The House of Representatives passed its version in December. Last week the Senate voted final approval with the aid of three Republican senators.

House Minority Leader John Boehner called the financial reform bill "ill conceived."

JOHN BOEHNER: "I think it's going to make credit harder for the American people to get, clearly harder for businesses to get."

But President Obama says Wall Street took irresponsible risks that threatened the financial system.

Under the new law, banks no longer can own or invest in certain trading operations. The government has new powers to seize failing financial companies. These include businesses that, during the financial crisis, were considered "too big to fail."

And President Obama says the law does something else.

BARACK OBAMA: "Finally, because of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street's mistakes. There will be no more tax-funded bailouts. Period."

Regulatory agencies will write hundreds of new rules for banks and other financial companies. This follows years of deregulation.