For the past few weeks, visitors and residents in Koenji have been haunted by a song — a plaintive, pentatonic melody that seems to circle endlessly, never quite resolving. You can hear it playing over speakers on the station platform just before the train doors close. It's there again as you walk down the Pal shopping arcade, under banners advertising the area's most famous event.
It's the signature tune of the Awa odori, a dance that was born centuries ago in Tokushima Prefecture on the southern island of Shikoku, but which this bustling neighborhood in western Tokyo has claimed as its own.
This weekend, 10,000 performers and somewhere in the region of a million people will gather to mark the 60th anniversary of the Koenji Awa Odori, the capital's greatest street party. Over two evenings, 163 dance troupes (known as ren) will parade through the streets and narrow arcades to the accompaniment of flutes, shamisen and thunderous drumming.