Kariwano's Great Tug of War

A Ten-Ton Rope and a Town Divided in Two

Every year on the night of February 10, the people of Kariwano split their town into halves and pull against one another with a rope of rice straw that weighs ten tons. The event is called Kariwano no Otsunahiki, the Great Tug-of-War of Kariwano, and it takes place along Omachi-dori, the main street of this old district in Daisen City, Akita Prefecture.

There is not one rope but two. The upper town, Kamimachi, builds the ogazuna, the male rope, about 64 metres long. The lower town, Shimomachi, builds the megazuna, the female rope, about 50 metres. Each is roughly 2.2 metres around, thick enough that a grown adult cannot reach across it, and each weighs close to ten tons. The male rope ends in a stout projecting loop called the ken; the female rope has a wide opening called the sabaguchi. On the night of the event the ken is threaded through the sabaguchi and the two ropes are locked together with a knot known as the jaguchi-musubi, the snake-mouth knot.

Then several thousand people take hold and pull. There is a single round, and the pull has been known to run past half an hour before one side gives way.

The festival was designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property by the national government on January 21, 1984. By tradition it belonged to the night of the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the first full moon of the year and the heart of the koshogatsu, or Little New Year. The modern calendar has fixed it to February 10, but the timing still places it in the deep cold and packed snow of an Akita midwinter.

A Market Town and Its Contest

Kariwano grew up as a market town on the Ushu Kaido, the highway that ran north through the old province of Dewa. The names of its two halves still carry that history. Kamimachi is also called Futsukamachi, the second-day town, and Shimomachi is Itsukamachi, the fifth-day town, after the days each held its market. Local tradition holds that the tug-of-war once settled a real question: which side would hold the right to open the market for the coming year.

Another account traces the custom to the Nagayama family, said to descend from the warrior Taira no Masakado, who settled in Kariwano in early times. The family's tutelary deity was the ichigami, the god who watched over the marketplace, and the rope-pulling is said to have begun as an offering made to that deity. Whichever thread one follows, the event is reckoned to be more than five hundred years old, reaching back to the Muromachi period.

What earned it national recognition is partly its sheer scale. The Kariwano ropes are among the largest used in any straw-rope tug-of-war in Japan. Beyond size, the festival preserves an old form of Little New Year divination together with the rope-making craft and ritual sequence that surround it, all kept alive by the Kariwano Otsunahiki Preservation Society.

The divination still matters to a farming district. If Kamimachi wins, the price of rice is said to rise in the year ahead. If Shimomachi wins, the harvest is said to be good. Both readings are watched closely, and the pull is followed less as a sport than as an omen.

What to Watch For

The rope is the first thing to understand. It is built fresh every year from new rice straw, never reused. Each town gathers about 3,500 bundles of straw, some 7,000 in total, and the work begins roughly a month before the event. The ropes are not twisted in the ordinary way. They are made by a method called gumi, in which three small bunches of straw are plaited together in turn, giving the finished rope its dense, scaled surface.

The measurements carry meaning. The male rope runs 42 hiro in the old reckoning, a number tied to the yakudoshi, the unlucky year in a man's life at age 42. The female rope runs 33 hiro, the corresponding unlucky year for a woman.

A week before the pull, the two ropes are set out at the dop, the boundary point between the towns. Each is coiled into seven loops, piled up like a great serpent at rest, with the tip drawn up through the centre. The male rope is placed on the right as you face it, the female on the left.

On the day itself, a Shinto rite is held at Ukishima Shrine, after which a procession carries the ichigami to the ropes for offerings and purification. Then comes the oshiai, the pushing match. The two towns argue, in a form fixed by custom, over who will bring their rope forward first and how far. The dispute turns into a shoving contest, and the crowd chants "Joyasano-sa" in time with the swing of paper lanterns.

Reading the crowd, the tatemoto, the skilled leaders of each side, call for the ropes to be brought together. They thread the ken through the sabaguchi and tie the snake-mouth knot. A tatemoto standing on the knot raises a hand, shouts "Sora!", and the pull begins.

One detail explains much of the spectacle. The street is packed snow, and there is almost nothing to brace against, so a contest of thousands can stay deadlocked for a long time. When it finally ends, the knot has been drawn so tight that mallets and levers are needed to break it open. Every length of rope is then carried to Ukishima Shrine and offered there. Visitors should know that the pull is open to anyone who wants to take a place on the rope.

Around Kariwano

Kariwano sits in the western part of Daisen City, an easy stop on the JR Ou Main Line. The Otsuna Koryukan, the base of the preservation society, stands near the festival route and is a place to learn about the event outside of February.

Daisen City is best known elsewhere for Omagari, host of one of Japan's foremost fireworks competitions each August. History travellers can also visit the Hotta Stockade site, the earthwork remains of a ninth-century regional government fort and a designated national historic site. Kowakubi Onsen lies within reach for an overnight soak, and the well-preserved samurai quarter of Kakunodate is a short train ride away, making Kariwano a workable base for a wider trip through inland Akita.