Chokurairo Dance of Kotaki

Kotaki no Chōkurairo-mai: A Mountain Dance for Long Life

On the last Saturday of May, in the village of Kotaki at the Akita-side foot of Mount Chōkai, a low mound of packed earth becomes a stage. It measures roughly two ken square (about 3.6 meters) and rises only about 60 centimeters from the ground. Villagers call it Chōkurairo-yama, or the Enbudai. Nothing about it suggests a theatre, yet for centuries the people of Kotaki have insisted that the dance bearing the village's name can be performed nowhere else.

That dance is the Kotaki no Chōkurairo-mai, designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Japan on February 6, 2004. It belongs to a category of ritual performance known as ennen, an art form developed within large Buddhist temple complexes to pray for long life. The word "Chōkurairo" is understood locally to describe the figure of a person living long and well, and the whole performance is offered as a wish for longevity.

The dance is also known by two older names, Taeshiton and Hakkōsai Bugaku, traces of a past when it belonged not to the village but to the mountain priesthood.

From a Mountain Hall to a Village Shrine

Kotaki sits along the upper Naso River, on the old road climbing toward the summit of Mount Chōkai. The settlement marks the Akita-side trailhead of the mountain, and in the early modern period it was one of the bases of Chōkai Shugendō, the school of mountain asceticism practiced on these slopes.

The shrine where the dance takes place, Kinpō Shrine, was not always a Shinto shrine. Before the government separated Buddhism and Shinto in the early Meiji period, it was a Buddhist hall called the Zaō-dō, dedicated to Zaō Gongen, a deity of mountain worship. A temple named Ryūzanji administered its affairs, and the head priest of Ryūzanji directed its rituals. Lodges belonging to Ryūzanji's mountain ascetics stood throughout Kotaki, and for generations only people connected to that priesthood were permitted to perform the Chōkurairo-mai.

By tradition, the dance is far older than the shrine's recorded history. A local engi, or origin legend, tells of demons called Tenaga-Ashinaga who once tormented the people around Mount Chōkai. Emperor Montoku is said to have ordered the Tendai monk Jikaku Daishi to drive them away. After the demons were subdued, a Buddhist rite of thanksgiving called the Hakkōsai was held, and the dance performed at that ceremony is said to have become the Chōkurairo-mai. The story places these events in the ninth century, and while it cannot be verified, it explains why the dance and the Hakkōsai festival have always been spoken of together.

The festival itself once fell on the seventeenth day of the third lunar month and kept that date until around 1897. After several later changes, it settled on the last Saturday of May. When the mountain priesthood faded, the responsibility passed first to lay parishioners of Kinpō Shrine, and since 1964 it has rested with the Chōkaisan Kotaki Bugaku Preservation Society, whose members are residents of Kotaki itself.

Why the Dance Is Protected

The ennen tradition was once widespread among the great temples of medieval Japan, performed by monks and temple servants after major Buddhist services. Very little of it survives in its original form, and in northern Japan documented examples are especially scarce. The Chōkurairo-mai is valued because it still carries the structure of that older temple art: a sequence of distinct pieces, sung verses chanted to the beat of wooden clappers, and a clear link to a Buddhist ceremony of thanksgiving.

For researchers, the dance offers a rare working model of how ennen was actually staged and how it survived once it left temple hands and entered the keeping of a farming village. It was first recognized as an Akita prefectural cultural property in 1966, then selected by the national government in 1981 as an intangible folk performance requiring documentation. The 2004 designation as an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property confirmed its standing among the most significant surviving folk performing arts in the country.

What Happens on Festival Day

Preparation begins in mid-May, when rehearsals start in the village. The final practice is held the day before the festival, on the earthen stage itself. Afterwards the four corners of the mound are marked with bamboo and banners, ropes of plaited straw are strung around all four sides, and a curtain is hung on the east side to serve as a dressing room.

On the morning of the festival the dancers gather at a designated host house to put on costumes and makeup. A lion dance known as the Jūnidan-no-mai, the "dance in twelve sections," opens the day. A procession then forms and winds from the host house to Kinpō Shrine, gathering up the portable shrine and the masks of Ryōō and Nasori along the way before continuing to the stage in the precincts. The procession circles the mound three times, sets the portable shrine on the west side facing the stage, and the lion dance is offered once more on the mound itself.

The musicians play on the stage throughout: a drum, a flute, a small hand-held gong called the jaga, and the shakubyōshi, a pair of flat wooden clappers. The player holding the clappers also chants the sung verses. The dancers wait in the east-side dressing room and climb onto the stage as their turn comes. Seven pieces follow in order.

The Kusha-no-mai, also called Taeshiton, opens the cycle. Two young men in kariginu hunting robes wear the masks of Ryōō and Nasori, figures borrowed from the courtly bugaku dance tradition. They dance first with a tall lacquered cap in hand, then with their sleeves, then with fans.

In the Aragane-no-mai, a single young man carries a naginata, a long-bladed pole weapon. He cuts away the straw ropes strung around the four sides of the stage before beginning to dance.

The Chigo-no-mai is the heart of the cycle, and the piece for which "Chōkurairo" is the alternative name. Six boys wear flower hats. Three carry a small kakko drum at the waist; the other three hold a binzasara, a clattering instrument made of many thin wooden slats. The dance opens as a duet and grows into a dance for all six.

The Taiheiraku-no-mai follows, performed by four of those boys after they set their flower hats aside. Partway through they draw the sheathed swords at their waists and step through paired movements, two boys matching each other.

In the Sofu-Sobo-no-mai, two boys wear the masks of an old man and an old woman, the Okina and the Ōna. The Nuhoko-no-mai is danced by one young man in the Nasori mask, who receives a ritual wand. The closing Enbu-no-mai is also a solo: the dancer begins in the Ryōō mask holding a flat ceremonial baton, then changes to the Nasori mask and dances with a fan.

When the Enbu-no-mai ends, the spectators do not simply applaud. They press toward the stage and compete to pull the flowers from the dancers' flower hats, carrying them home as tokens of good fortune. With the flowers gone, the festival is over for another year.

Around Kotaki

The shrine stands close to the Naso River gorge, and a short walk leads to the Naso no Shirataki, a waterfall set among ancient cedars with Mount Chōkai rising behind it. The falls were designated a national place of scenic beauty in 1932 and are known locally for azaleas and wisteria in season. The gorge of the Naso River, cut deep beneath dense forest, continues upstream toward the fifth-station viewpoint at Hokodate on Mount Chōkai.

Closer to the coast lies Kisakata, a landscape once celebrated alongside Matsushima for its scattered islets. A great earthquake in 1804 lifted the seabed and turned the lagoon into dry land; the small pine-covered mounds that remain are all that is left of the islands the poet Bashō admired on his journey north. The combination makes Kotaki an easy stop for travelers exploring the meeting point of sacred mountain, river, and sea.