October

October brings the Nagoya Festival, a massive parade throughout the city celebrating three great warriors and historical leaders connected to the city: Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu. However, this is by no means the only – nor even the most interesting – of the festivals celebrating the city’s great history this month. Another festival that is well worth checking out, though something of a far cry from the great leaders of Japan, is the Osu Street Performers’ Festival in Nagoya’s shopping district of Osu. Osu Street Performers’ Festival’s History While today Osu is best known for its Buddhist temple and broad, eclectic collection of unusual clothes stores and boutique restaurants, the history of Osu is something a little bit different. During the Edo period, ‘yūjo’ (literally ‘women of pleasure’) and brothels were restricted to ‘yūkaku’, a closed-off area reserved for the sex trade, a red light district as we know it today. In Nagoya, that area was what we now call Osu. As these yūkaku flourished, as well as being home to the city’s sex workers, they grew to include all manner of recreation activities, from fine dining to theaters to shopping and street performance. It is these entertainers from Osu’s 400-year history that…