I learned from our local news a little known piece of Nebuta history. Karasuzoku, or the crow gang have been plaguing the festival for at least twenty years, maybe much longer. The karasuzoku take part in the parade along with everyone else, but don't dress in the traditional haneto costumes and they don't join in with the big groups. Instead, they dress in matching black outfits (hence the crow moniker), and drift from group to group, and back and forth from the crowd to the parade as they please. But if that were the only bad thing they did, they'd hardly be interesting.
What makes the crows a problem is the other trouble they get up to during and after the parade, like making lots of noise and pushing people around. Not surprisingly, they tend drink an awful lot before and after the parade, and most annoyingly, as they walk in the parade, they're known to drink beer from arms length, pouring it into their mouths, leaving a mess on the street and then tossing the not-completely-empty cans into the crowds or at the cops. It might sound bad, but that's pretty much the standard for trouble-making in Japan.
This year roughly 380 karasuzoku and hakuchouzoku (their white clad bretheren, "the swan gang") made for an interesting site to be sure, but 5 years ago their number was nearly thirty times that! My police officer coworker recalls the parade route turning into seas of black back then. He talks with some pride about getting the situation under control lately.
If I had know about the karasuzoku (and hakuchouzoku) last week, I would have gotten a couple of pictures, but all I've got is this blurry one. She is one of the trashy high school girls that accompany the kurasuzoku, usually halfway out of costume. I didn't manage to find any pictures of the karasuzoku in action, but I found a blog entry about wanting to be a karasu and another about the scary experience of getting in the same elevator with a couple of crow girls. I also found this page showing how bad it had gotten. By 2003 it was already under 1000, so kudos to the previously-maligned aomori cops.
(a more thorough entry about nebuta is coming up soon. I am trying to choose some good pictures and get things straight on the history of the festival and such)
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