Biography|Hikaru Kondo — Machi Asobi Began on This River Stage

On 10 October 2009 Tokushima's downtown stopped being only a backdrop and became the venue.

Machi Asobi vol. 1 ran three days, 10 to 12 October, as a collaboration with the city's Bizan autumn festival.

Kondo's studio planned and produced the first twenty-one editions.

The format was not a hall with turnstiles. Stages, shops, and pop-ups sat along the Shinmachi River, on the boardwalk, and up the mountain.

This pin is Shinmachibashi East Park, the river stage that later editions kept using except when a single volume skipped it.

The first edition drew about 12,000 people. By vol. 20 the count the organizers published was 84,000.

Machi is the local word for the streets around Tokushima Station. Asobi is play.

The name told visitors to walk the town rather than queue at one gate.

Prefectural tourism staff sat on the host committee from vol. 2. The planning for the early years was still ufotable.

Kondo treated the hometown not as a logo on an end card but as a set of parks, bridges, and a ropeway.

Later volumes added Shinmachi Boardwalk stalls, Aibahama Park, and a west-bank stage at Ryogokubashi.

The river stage is still there. Seats face a platform with water behind it. Tour boats pass during sets.

A visitor who comes off-festival finds a small park. The memory is the weekend the park learned to hold a city.

Photo: Thirteen-fri, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons