Bon-goya Ritual of Kisakata

Beach Huts That Welcome and Send Off the Ancestors

The Bon-goya Ritual of Kisakata (象潟の盆小屋行事) is a Bon ritual of Kisakata, Nikaho City, Akita Prefecture, in which simple huts of straw and timber are built on the shore and great fires lit to welcome and send off the spirits of the ancestors, selected in 2008 as an Intangible Folk Cultural Property Requiring Documentation.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs lists the Kisakata Bon-goya Ritual Preservation Society as preservation body.

Selection for documentation is a separate system from designation, under which the state records practices so that they are preserved.

The Ritual

According to the Agency, the Bon-goya Ritual of Kisakata is kept by five communities of the Kisakata district, Kamihama-no-machi, Shimohama-no-machi, Hamabata, Kanmuriishi and Shimoaraya, and held on Ozeki beach from 12 to 15 August.

Each hut is about one ken square, with stakes driven into the sand as posts, a timber frame and a roof and walls of straw bundles. It faces the village, with the entrance on the left and an altar on the right. One is built for each community, so five huts stand at nearly equal intervals along the shore.

On the altar a memorial tablet for the ancestors stands at the centre with watermelons, apples, flowers and candles, and ground cherries, rugosa rose hips, somen noodles and other offerings hang on threads above.

What to Look For

According to the Agency, on the evening of the twelfth people bring lanterns and incense to their hut and pray to the sea at the water's edge. Around 7 p.m. the welcoming fire is lit and children holding lanterns chant to the grandfathers and grandmothers to come by the light of the fire, welcoming the spirits from beyond the sea. On the night of the fifteenth the huts are burned as sending-off fires, with the same chant to send the spirits back across the sea.

The huts and ritual were once entirely the work of village boys of primary and junior high school age, but with fewer children adults have taken part since the early 1980s, and wheat straw has given way to rice straw.

Visiting the Bon-goya Ritual of Kisakata

It is held on Ozeki beach in Kisakata from 12 to 15 August. As a rite for the ancestors, observers should not disturb the families' prayers.

Enquiries go to the Nikaho City board of education.