The southern Japanese island of Kyushu is famed for its maritime celebrations. The festival of Kunchi in Nagasaki annually draws huge crowds to riotously decorated boats borne about the streets that evoke the trading ships of China and Portugal, and of the Dutch. As processions make their way to the Suwa Shrine down the clamorous side streets and through the neighborhoods and districts, the city is alive with the spectacle of dazzling lacquered and gilded boats carried on undulating seas of shoulders and cries, sailing across the boulevards.

Rites and rituals crowd the streets and are a colorful spectacle of lavishly staged and costumed dance troupes working on a seven-year cycle of neighborhoods, accompanied by fireworks, prayers, chants and songs, lanterns and drums. The ceremonial boats frame dances by golden dragons, and pantomimes of collared Europeans in face paint, jousting amidst stylized sail imprints of the Dutch East India Company, billowing with authority.