Japan

While travelling randomly, a tourist could cross the country of the Sun Raising without seeing only one kite.

However, at the same time as it opens with the modern sporting kites, Japan is the guard of an old tradition,without any doubt the most richest and strongest all over the world : we can count more than two hundred kinds of kites, manufactured and decorated in the same way that at the last centuries.

There are a hundred and fifty years the kites were with the apogee of their popularity. Everywhere they occupied the sky, in the countryside as downtown, where the merchants made them fly since their step of door.

Japan changed, but Japanese is attached to preserve a number of their old custom.

In spite of industrialization with excess, the traditional kites are always well there, even if we don't see them any more but at the time of great annual celebrations.

Each model is specifically associated a precise area, even at only one city : the kite represents it, fact part of the soil, inheritance of the city. Such the O-dako which we accomodated in Dieppe in 1998 who is specific to Yôkaichi.

Formerly in Japan, we counted thousands, craftsmen specialized in the manufacture of the kites. Nowadays, there does not remain about it more than one around fifty.

But, more and more of local associations ensure the safeguarding of their regional models. Always impassioned and sometimes as talented as the best professionals, the amateur kitefliers took over.

The tradition of the Japanese kites is not ready to disappear.