How Do Festival Carts (Dashi) Vie In Music At Hachioji Festival?

I introduced various traditional festival carts (Dashi) of annual Hachioji Festibal in my previous post and wrote these festival carts are rivals each other. So their designs are all different and people on these carts compete each other in music play and performances, too, at Hachioji Festival. Then how will they vie in music?

At Hachioji Festival, each Dashi cart has music instruments and the players on it, such as drums in various sizes, traditional flutes, and other traditional percussion instruments. Japanese traditional festival musics are called "Ohayashi", and actually people on each Dashi cart play "Ohayashi" with their own rhythm. 

When two or more than two Dashi carts meet on a intersection of National Rd. 20, which is the main street for Hachioji Festival as shown in the photos on the upper row, they start competing in playing musics. It is called "Buttsuke (hitting)" and one of the must-see-points of Hachioji Festival. Since each of them has own Ohayashi music, the "Buttsuke (hitting)" becomes like an ensemble of different rhythms. Thus, keeping own rhythm is the decisive in the competition. When one cart's musicians lost their rhythm influenced by other carts' musicians, it means they lost in the match.

Of course it is not so serious competition. It is to make the festival more exciting. So after the music competition, people on carts praise each other and throw very thin paper tapes called "Spider net throwing tapes", or confetti called "Kamifubuki (paper  blizzard)" from top of these Dashi carts as you can see in photos on the lower row. The ending of "Buttsuke" looks cool, too!!

The video below shows a sample of Ohayashi music and wolf and fox performers at Hachioji Festival.