Hanawa Festival Food Stall Event

Hanawa Festival Float Events: Two Nights of Drums That Never Stop

For two nights each August, ten festival floats move through the streets of Hanawa, a mountain town in northern Akita Prefecture, and the drummers riding them never let the rhythm fall silent. The reason becomes clear the moment a float passes close by: the front section has no floor. The taiko players stand on the road surface itself, marking the beat with their feet and hips as they walk along with the float.

This is the festival known locally as Hanawa-bayashi. Its formal title in Japan's register of cultural properties is the Hanawa Festival Float Events (Hanawa-matsuri no yatai gyōji). It is the joint grand festival of two shrines in Hanawa, Saiwai Inari Shrine and Hanawa Shinmeisha, and it has been performed in this same town for at least two and a half centuries.

A Festival Rooted in a Mining Town

Hanawa sits on the upper reaches of the Yoneshiro River and forms the centre of present-day Kazuno City. From the early modern period it prospered as a collection point for timber from the surrounding forests and for ore from nearby mines. The Morioka domain placed a magistrate's office here, and the Kazuno highway connected the town to Morioka. Mining wealth continued into the Meiji era, when modernised extraction and smelting made the district one of the most productive in the country.

The exact origin of the festival is not known. Its first appearance in a document is in a 1765 ledger of the copper mines, which records that the shrine festival at Hanawa alternated each year with one at nearby Kemanai. A record from 1863 notes simply that the Hanawa festival was cancelled that year, confirming that the event was already being held under that name in the Edo period.

For most of its history the festival belonged to Saiwai Inari Shrine alone, which served as the guardian shrine for one cluster of the town's neighbourhoods. In 1960 the grand festival of Hanawa Shinmeisha was combined with it, and the two shrines have shared the occasion ever since. Today ten neighbourhoods of Hanawa each bring out a float.

Why It Was Designated

The Hanawa Festival Float Events were designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property by the national government on 10 March 2014. The designation recognises the event as a typical example of a custom that reflects a fundamental feature of everyday Japanese life, specifically a religious festival prayer for good harvests and household safety.

Two years later, in 2016, the festival gained wider recognition when it was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It was entered not on its own but as one of 33 float festivals across Japan grouped together as the "Yama, Hoko, Yatai float festivals." Visitors familiar with the Gion Festival of Kyoto or the Takayama Festival will recognise Hanawa-bayashi as a northern member of that same family.

What sets the Hanawa event apart within that group is the construction of its floats and the way the music is performed while walking. The festival is also sometimes counted among Japan's three great festival-music traditions, a ranking that carries no official status but reflects the regard in which the playing is held.

The Floats, the Music, and the Young Men's Associations

Each float is built in what locals call the koshinuke or open-bottom style. The front portion has no floor, the wheels and frame are kept simple so the float can move while music is played, and the roof takes the curved kara-hafu gable form. Carved ornaments decorate the ridge boards and gable pendants, and around twenty paper lanterns hang from the structure. The drummer steps into the floorless front and plays while walking, taking the rhythm through legs and hips. Flute and shamisen players ride in the rear, and the players of the small gong either sit on the railing or walk alongside the float entirely.

The musical repertoire runs to thirteen pieces, among them honbayashi, kagura drumming, and a misty-toned melody called kiribayashi. Tradition holds that several of these were learned from Kyoto during the Tenpō era, roughly the 1830s and early 1840s. While a float is moving the standard piece is honbayashi, and a long-held rule states that the music must never stop for as long as the float is in motion.

Running the floats is the work of the young men's associations, one for each neighbourhood. A man joins around the time he finishes high school and remains a member until the age of 42. Roles are assigned by seniority, from the head of the association down through deputies, the officials who direct a float's route, and the messengers who relay instructions. Younger participants and visiting performers play the music and pull the floats. People in mourning do not take part.

The procession follows a set of fixed courtesies. When the lead float crosses into another neighbourhood's territory, a ritual called chōzakai takes place: the lead float and the float waiting to receive it face each other at the boundary, and their officials exchange greetings. At times the two floats are brought into contact in a friendly contest of music called bachi-awase. At gathering points the members perform a rhythmic hand-clapping ceremony called sansa, lining up shoulder to shoulder and chanting in time three times over. When a float passes a house in mourning, the music halts and the lanterns are darkened.

What to Watch For When You Visit

The festival is held every year on 19 and 20 August, with the floats moving through the streets of Hanawa from the evening of the 19th until the small hours of the 21st. Activity is almost continuous across the two nights, but a few moments stand out.

On the evening of the 19th all ten floats gather, then process to the square in front of Kazuno-Hanawa Station, where each neighbourhood shows off its best music. This station-front gathering is the high point that most visitors come to see, and reserved viewing seats are sold for it. After midnight on the 20th comes the asazume, or morning assembly: the floats gather at a bridge over the Yoneshiro River, then move toward the southern edge of town, where each in turn receives a blessing from the shrine priests and offers its finest music before the portable shrine. As dawn breaks the floats return to their own neighbourhoods playing the misty kiribayashi.

If your travel dates do not align with the festival, the festival exhibition hall at the Kazuno roadside station displays the floats year-round and stages a live performance of the music roughly once a month from April through November, August excepted.

Around Kazuno

Kazuno rewards a longer stay. The Ōyu Stone Circles, two large prehistoric stone arrangements built by Jōmon-period communities, lie a short drive away and form part of the "Jōmon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan" inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Osarizawa Mine, once central to the wealth that supported the festival, is now open as a heritage attraction where visitors can walk the old tunnels. The hot-spring villages of the Ōyu area offer a place to soak and stay, and the Hachimantai highlands to the south are popular for hiking and autumn colour. Kazuno is also regarded as a home of kiritanpo, the pounded-rice hotpot dish that is one of Akita's signature foods.