Kakunodate Festival Mountain Event

Kakunodate Festival Float Events: Akita's Town of Colliding Floats

The loudest moment of the Kakunodate festival arrives after dark on September 9, when two wooden floats weighing around eight tons each roll toward one another in a narrow street and crash head on. This collision, called yama-buttsuke, breaks out when the crews of two floats cannot agree on who has the right of way. Negotiations fail, the ropes go taut, and several hundred people throw their weight behind their float until one side gives ground. The crowd presses in close, the festival music keeps playing, and the contest can go on deep into the night.

Held every year from September 7 to 9 in Kakunodate, part of Senboku City in Akita Prefecture, the Kakunodate Festival Float Events (Kakunodate Matsuri no Yama Gyoji) form the joint festival of Shinmeisha shrine and the Yakushidō hall of Jojuin temple. The event was designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1991, and in 2016 it was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity as one of thirty-three float festivals grouped under the title Yama, Hoko and Yatai float festivals in Japan.

Three Days, Two Shrines

The festival follows the rhythm of two places of worship that the town has long depended on. Shinmeisha is the guardian shrine of Kakunodate, and the Yakushido hall, which enshrines Yakushi Nyorai, the Buddha of healing, serves as the tutelary deity of the place where residents were born and raised. The schedule splits neatly between them. September 7 is the eve festival of Shinmeisha. September 8 brings the main festival of Shinmeisha together with the eve festival of the Yakushido. September 9 closes the cycle with the main festival of the Yakushido, and this final night is when the float collisions reach their peak.

Devotion to Yakushi sits at the root of the whole event. The townspeople welcome the deities at a turning point in the season and ask for protection over their livelihoods, the prosperity of the district, and the health and safety of their families. That older religious purpose still runs underneath the noise and competition of the modern festival.

A Festival Born in the Merchant Quarter

Kakunodate grew up as the castle town of the Satake Kita family, a senior branch of the lords who ruled the Akita domain. The town was laid out in two clear halves. The samurai lived in the inner town, known as uchimachi, while merchants and craftsmen lived in the outer town, the tomachi. The festival belongs to the outer town, and it expanded as that merchant quarter grew wealthier over the centuries.

The first written trace of the event appears in the Satake Kita Family Diary, in an entry dated to Genroku 14, the year 1701. The records suggest that the festival was originally tied to a Yakushi observance held on the eighth day of the twelfth month. Through a long series of changes it shifted to its present dates in early September. The basic structure that the diary points to has held remarkably steady: display floats raised at set locations, a festival lodge in each district to handle negotiations, pulling floats worked mainly by the young men of each district, and music performed on board.

Display Floats and Pulling Floats

Two kinds of float give the festival its shape. The first are the oki-yama, large display floats that stay in one place. Three of them are raised each year, in front of the Shinmeisha torii gate, in front of the Yakushido hall, and at the crossroads of the district known as Tatemachi. In earlier times they were built on empty lots or in the gardens of leading families.

Their construction follows old rules. A living tree is used as the core pole, and the top of the frame must always be finished with a mekago, a coarse open basket. Bumps are added on the left and right to suggest rocks, the join with the central mountain shape is read as a valley, and a section at the front middle is called the mizuya. Builders drape the frame in dark cotton cloth, plant pine in the valleys and wild grass and small evergreens in the mizuya, and set warrior figures into the scene.

The second kind are the hiki-yama, the floats that move. Today there are around eighteen of them, and each weighs in the region of eight tons. They carry the same cloth-covered mountain form and large figures, traditionally armoured warriors, with scenes drawn from kabuki also appearing in more recent practice. A figure of a comic character often rides at the back. Crews of young men pull these floats through the streets while musicians and dancers ride above.

The Lodges, the Right of Way, and the Collision

Each district that sends out a pulling float keeps a base called a haringban, a festival lodge. Inside, hanging scrolls of Amaterasu and of Yakushi Nyorai are placed at the center of the main room, and a marker stands at the street side decorated with pine, pampas grass, and evergreens. Officials wait here through the festival. When a float from another district wants to pass through, its young men come to negotiate, and the officials grant or withhold permission.

This system of permissions is what produces the festival's tension. A float on its way to worship at Shinmeisha or the Yakushido is called a nobori-yama, an ascending float, while one returning after its offering is a kudari-yama, a descending float. On the busy days these floats approach from opposite directions and meet at intersections. By custom the ascending float has priority and the other gives way. When the two crews talk it over and still cannot agree, the standoff turns into a yama-buttsuke, and the floats are driven into each other until the matter is settled by force.

Music That Changes With the Moment

The music played on the floats is called Oyama-bayashi, and it was recognized as a notable folk performing art well before the wider festival received its national designation. The repertoire today runs to around seventeen pieces, each matched to a particular situation. A float climbing toward the shrine plays the ascending tune. One coming back down plays the traveling piece. When a float halts, the musicians switch to standing numbers such as ken-bayashi and nihon-dake.

While a float is stopped, dancers take over the small stage at its front and perform hand dances in time with the music. The instruments include a transverse flute, large and small drums, a hand drum, a hand gong, and the shamisen. Local songs such as Akita Obako are danced as well. The dancing developed its own refined style precisely because the performers had so little room to work with on the cramped platform, and it has become one of the great draws of the event in its own right.

Beyond the Festival: The Old Castle Town

Kakunodate rewards a visit at any time of year, not only during the festival. The former samurai quarter has survived unusually well, and a stretch of about 720 meters along the main inner-town street is protected as a national Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings. Black board fences and heavy gates line the road, and several houses are open to visitors. The Aoyagi and Ishiguro residences let you step inside and see how mid-ranking samurai families lived, with the Ishiguro house counting among the oldest surviving samurai dwellings in the area.

The town is also famous for its weeping cherry trees, many of them growing behind the samurai fences and descended from saplings said to have been brought from Kyoto. In spring the cherries along the Hinokinai River embankment draw large crowds. Local specialties are worth seeking out too, from kabazaiku, a craft of working polished cherry bark into boxes and tea caddies, to the prized chestnuts of nearby Saimyoji. The reputation Kakunodate has earned as the Little Kyoto of the north country rests on exactly this mix of preserved streets, gardens, and seasonal color.