Shinmei Shrine Demon Festival

Toyohashi Shinmeisha no Onimatsuri: A Demon, a Tengu, and a Cloud of Flour

Every February 10th and 11th, a man in a heavy red costume and lacquered demon mask sprints out of a shrine compound in central Toyohashi, scattering candy and white powder over hundreds of waiting spectators. By the time he reaches the street, the front rows have been dusted so thoroughly that hair, coats, and camera lenses all turn the same pale color. The chase that leads up to this moment — a stylized confrontation between a red oni and a sword-bearing tengu, performed on an octagonal stone stage in front of the shrine — sits at the center of the festival officially designated as Toyohashi Shinmeisha no Onimatsuri.

The host shrine is Akumi Kanbe Shinmeisha (安久美神戸神明社), commonly known to locals as Toyohashi Shinmeisha or simply "the Ise-sama of Toyohashi." It stands in the Hatcho district of Toyohashi City in Aichi Prefecture, a short walk from Toyohashi Park and the ruins of Yoshida Castle. The festival is held over two days as the shrine's spring annual rite (haru no reisai), and is widely described in the Higashi-Mikawa region as the event that brings spring to the area.

A Thousand-Year Lineage in a Shrine Town

Shrine tradition traces the site itself to the year 940 (Tengyō 3), when the Akumi estate was donated by Emperor Suzaku to Ise Jingū as a sacred landholding (shinryō) following the suppression of Taira no Masakado's rebellion. The shrine was established there to enshrine Amaterasu-Ōmikami and to pray for the prosperity of the new territory. The festival itself is said to have grown out of agricultural rites for a bountiful harvest performed in this rural shrine domain, and many of the dengaku-style dances preserved within it are believed to descend from the agrarian performing arts that flourished from the Heian period into the Kamakura period.

The earliest firmly datable records come from the Muromachi period. By that time, masks used in the rituals were reportedly being donated by powerful figures: one tradition holds that the warlord Imagawa Yoshimoto presented sacred masks to the shrine. After Yoshida Castle was built and a castle town and post town grew up around it, the festival shifted from a farmers' celebration in Akumi village into a larger urban rite protected by the lords of Yoshida domain during the Edo period.

The current shrine grounds date from a relocation in 1885 (Meiji 18). Five of its structures — the main hall, the offering and worship halls, the sacred dance hall (kagura-den), the treasury, and the purification basin — were registered as Tangible Cultural Properties on the national register in 2010. Visitors who come outside of festival days will find a quiet wooded precinct of timber buildings and a notable old pine traditionally said to be the spot where Tokugawa Ieyasu once sat to watch the Oni Matsuri.

Why It Was Designated

The festival was first listed as an Aichi Prefectural Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1954, then selected by the national government in 1976 as an intangible folk cultural property requiring documentation. It was elevated to the rank of Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property on January 28, 1980, under the formal name Toyohashi Shinmeisha no Onimatsuri. The designating body is the Toyohashi Oni Matsuri Preservation Society (Toyohashi Onimatsuri Hozonkai).

The reason for designation comes down to continuity. The Agency for Cultural Affairs identifies the festival as a rare surviving example in which Heian-Kamakura era agricultural dengaku has been preserved largely without alteration, while being interwoven with kagura motifs drawn from Japanese creation myth. The opening of the Heavenly Rock Cave (Amenoiwato-biraki), in which a blue demon takes the role of the strongman deity Tajikarao-no-Mikoto, is performed alongside ceremonial archery, divination, and dengaku percussion sequences whose patterns are not found elsewhere in the same combination. Because the rite carries the shrine's annual prayer for harvest and public welfare, it was sustained without interruption even during wartime, which is itself rare among large urban festivals.

What to Watch For

The festival runs across two days, and visitors who arrive only for the famous Karakai miss most of what makes it distinctive. The first day, February 10th, is the eve festival (yoimatsuri). It opens around 10 a.m. with the Iwato no Mai, a dance on an octagonal platform in front of the worship hall, accompanied by koto, flute, and drums. Three deities in flowing ancient-style costume dance to the chant "Iyasaka hoi hoi" until a blue oni — playing Tajikarao-no-Mikoto, the deity who pulled open the rock cave — appears and performs a sequence of powerful movements.

The second day, February 11th, is the main festival (honmatsuri) and lasts from dawn into the afternoon. Among the highlights:

• Omato no Shinji (御的神事) — a ceremonial archery rite in which two archers, representing the "high lands" (kanchi) and "low lands" (fukuchi), take turns firing twelve arrows. The twelve arrows correspond to the twelve months, and the rite prays for peace through each of them. After the ceremony, the wooden target is torn down and the fragments are carried home by spectators as protective talismans.
• Dengaku (田楽) — drum-and-percussion dances led by performers called shitenshi in mountain-shaped lacquered hats decorated with sun, moon, and the twenty-eight lunar lodgings. Six child attendants in white robes and red hakama follow with small wooden clappers, producing the sequence locally nicknamed "Pon-Ten-Zara" after the three sounds it makes.
• The Karakai (天狗と赤鬼のからかい): the climax. The red oni, costume bound with thick white cord and bitter orange affixed to the gohei on his back, faces off against an armored tengu wielding a naginata. After a stylized exchange of fans and challenges, the demon is driven back, eventually breaks for the gate, and races out through the town. Behind him, his attendants throw handfuls of tankiri-ame (a small hard candy) and toss white wheat flour into the crowd. The flour is said to ward off summer illness; the candy is said to bring the same.
• Otama-hiki (御玉引き): the final rite of the day. A polished enoki-wood ball, wrapped with a thick sacred rope, is set on a stone pedestal. The two archers from the morning rite pull on it from opposite sides using hooks made from enoki branches. If the "high lands" team wins, mountain crops will thrive; if the "low lands" win, the rice paddies will. Farmers in the surrounding districts traditionally took planting cues from the result.

A third figure to look for is the kuro-oni, the black demon. Dressed in white robes with a black overlay marked by two white stripes, he stands quietly to the east of the dance stage throughout the morning. Tradition has it that any child whose head he touches will avoid summer sickness and grow up strong. Unlike his red counterpart, he never fights; his role is to witness, to lead the sacred procession, and to bless.

The Red Demon's Year

The man chosen to play the red oni is selected by lottery from the parishioners of the Nakasegoko-chō neighborhood at the end of January. Historically the role was sought out voluntarily by men in their yakudoshi (unlucky year), since carrying it was thought to absorb personal misfortune. Once chosen, the performer enters a period of strict purification. He eats apart from his family, and his food must be prepared by a man or by an older woman. Four-legged animals are off the menu, as is milk. Contact with women of childbearing age — even eye contact and conversation — is restricted. On the eve of the festival he sleeps inside the shrine, and on the morning of the main day, after a brief purification rite, he has three buckets of cold water from the shrine's own well poured over his head.

Only veterans of the role are permitted to touch the costume or the man wearing it. These attendants, called oni-zuke, manage the demon throughout the day. The level of ceremony around what looks, to an outside eye, like a piece of street theater is one of the things that gives the festival its weight.

Beyond the Shrine

Akumi Kanbe Shinmeisha sits inside a compact cluster of cultural sites that makes it easy to fold into a half-day in Toyohashi. Directly to the north is Toyohashi Park, which contains the reconstructed turret of Yoshida Castle, the former seat of the Edo-period domain that patronized the festival. The Toyohashi City Museum of Art and History is on the same grounds. The Toyohashi Hari­stos Orthodox Church, completed in 1913 and one of the oldest Russian Orthodox churches in Japan, stands almost immediately next door to the shrine and adds an unexpected note to the neighborhood.

Toyohashi is also one of the few cities in Japan still served by an active streetcar system. The Toyohashi Railway Azumada line runs east from Toyohashi Station and stops at Shiyakusho-mae and Toyohashi Kōen-mae, both about a three- to four-minute walk from the shrine. Riding the trams is a small pleasure in itself. For food, Toyohashi is the home of Toyohashi curry udon, a layered bowl with rice and tororo at the bottom and curry udon on top; several restaurants serving it operate within walking distance.