Following the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11th, 2011, on my first visit that fall to the Rikuchū Coast of Iwate Prefecture, Japan, one of the first questions local residents asked me was, “Are you coming to the matsuri?” Three years and many subsequent visits later, this cheery inquiry, typically delivered upon my arrival - usually by friends but sometimes by strangers - has not changed. Initially, I was quite taken aback (even a little offended) by this seemingly trivial query, as enjoying a matsuri seemed contrary to my “more serious” purpose for being there - to clear tsunami debris, identify local residents' needs, and to help clean up or rebuild their houses and schools as requested. But quickly, I came to realize the sincere intent of this question as I experienced how matsuri, often described in English as “folk festivals,” are taking on a special new meaning and significance for the residents of local communities on the tsunami ravaged Iwate coast. The study of matsuri in general has been a mainstay of Japanese ethnology and folklore studies during the pre and postwar periods, a literature and topic with which I am quite familiar (Yanagida 1946; Minakata 1951, and Miyamoto 1960). But never did I imagine that my own presence at a local matsuri in a coastal Iwate town post 3.11 would become such an important way to build mutual trust with coastal residents, delineate their most important priorities, or to learn about the powerful historical ties that bind these communities together. This experience contrasts sharply with the historical literature on matsuri such as is cited above, which has often focused on its inherent ritual and belief systems, and considered folk festivities to be a fairly static repository of the nation's (and that particular region's) historical beliefs and customs. While this monograph is informed by this heritage, my ethnographic experience in Iwate coastal communities post 3.11 reveals the more dynamic role of local folk festivities as espoused by contemporary Japanese ethnologists such as Shinno (1993), Iijima (2001), and Naito (2007), who conceive local matsuri to be fluid, malleable, reactive, and adaptive constructions – the products of historical precedents but also of contemporary social and cultural values that reveal and reflect the many ongoing sociocultural processes in that locale.