Important Intangible Folk Cultural Properties of Japan

At Hiruko Shrine in Makinohara, Shizuoka, seventeen acts mime a year of rice farming by firelight on a February night, with no instruments, only chant and gesture.

Discover Mitsuke Tenjin Hadaka Matsuri, a National Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property held each September at Yanahime Shrine in Iwata City, Shizuoka. Explore the history, the wild Oni Odori dance of loincloth-clad men, the lights-out procession, and practical visitor tips for one of Japan's most extraordinary festivals.

Every September 20th in Nanao, Ishikawa, nineteen shrines converge bearing crimson banners twenty meters tall, climaxing in the shimada-kuzushi banner tilt.

On the Noto Peninsula, masked figures playing tengu and oni visit homes at new year, scolding idle children and driving out misfortune. A UNESCO-listed folk rite.

Kazusa-bori is a hand-powered well-drilling craft perfected in Chiba in the late 1800s, driving a chisel-tipped iron pipe on split bamboo to reach deep groundwater.

Performed each August 16 at Kōshōji in Chiba, Kiraigō is Japan's only surviving hell play: a seven-act masked drama in which a damned sinner is saved by Jizō.

Designated a national folk property in 1992, the Shiramazu Ōmachi unfolds every four years on the Bōsō Peninsula, famed for its sun-and-moon banner-pulling contest.

Held each December in the secluded mountain hamlets of Nagano's Toyama Valley, the Toyama no Shimotsuki Matsuri is an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Japan. Masked deities dance around boiling cauldrons through the night, and bare-handed performers fling sacred steaming water over worshippers in a ritual of renewal. Famously cited by Hayao Miyazaki as an inspiration behind 'Spirited Away,' it has been preserved for more than seven centuries.

Discover Yuki Matsuri, a National Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property held every January 14–15 at Izu Shrine in Niino, Anan Town, Nagano. This all-night ritual preserves dengaku, kagura, bugaku, sarugaku, and ta-asobi in their early forms and is regarded as a living origin of Noh and Kyōgen. Folklorist Shinobu Orikuchi called it a festival every student of Japanese performing arts must see at least once.

Masked men dance the Ōodori on Bon nights at two Niijima temples, 150 km south of Tokyo. The furyū dance became a National property in 2005, UNESCO-listed in 2022.

Tokushima three-man puppet theater, set to gidayu chant and shamisen. Its oversized six-sun heads and bold style set it apart. A national folk property since 1999.

Once a year at Zentoku Tenmangu on a 1,060m ridge in Tokushima's Iya Valley, dancers in flower hats perform twelve drum patterns, a UNESCO-listed Furyu rain dance.

On January 3 in the Tochigi hamlet of Hokkōji, costumed parishioners demand seventy-five bowls of rice from the festival's new officer in a folk rite from Nikkō.

At Nenbutsuji in Gojo, Nara, three masked oni carry 60-kg torches through the hall each January 14. The oni bring fortune, a rite protected nationally since 1995.

Boys in three Toyama communities dance a court-bugaku rite designated nationally in 1982, carried so their feet never touch the ground until the dance ends.

Discover Kanezawa no Hayama Gomori, a nationally designated Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property held at Kuronuma Shrine in Fukushima. This ancient three-day winter ritual features purification rites, the dramatic Yoisa ceremony, and divine oracles from Mount Hayama.