Intangible Folk Cultural Properties Requiring Documentation of Japan

A shaggy lion dance performed at the harvest-moon festival in Urasoe, Okinawa. Carved from deigo wood, it keeps eleven refined acts and was revived after the war.

On Okinawa's Taketomi Island, the ten-day Tanedori opens the sowing season with some eighty dances and plays before a sacred grove. Designated nationally in 1977.

On Okinawa's remote Tarama Island, the August Dance fills three lunar days each autumn. Born in the poll-tax era, it spans lion dances to kumiodori, listed in 1975.

Fēnushima, preserved in Naha's Asato district, is a unique Okinawan folk performing art that fuses southern Pacific stick dancing with mainland Japanese Buddhist dance. Designated in 1979 as a nationally selected intangible folk cultural property, it features dancers in striking red wigs and grass skirts performing powerful staff combat and gourd dances.

On the harvest-moon night of the eighth lunar month, Nobaru in Miyakojima keeps a 300-year rite: stick dancing, a solemn women's dance, and a joyful circle dance.

Discover Mushaama, the spectacular Bon festival held on Hateruma Island, Japan's southernmost inhabited island. This designated folk cultural property features costumed processions led by the Miruku deity, martial arts, lion dances, and Buddhist memorial dances, all honoring ancestors and praying for abundant harvests.

Kuicha is the communal song-and-dance of Okinawa's Miyako Islands, a clapping, stamping ring danced at harvest rites and famous for marking the poll tax's end.

The Paantu of Miyakojima is a dramatic folk ritual on Okinawa's Miyako Island where vine-clad, mud-covered visiting deities charge through villages, smearing sacred mud on people and homes to ward off evil spirits. Designated a nationally Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1993 and inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2018, this centuries-old tradition encompasses two distinct ceremonies in the Shimajiri and Nobaru communities, standing as a globally recognized example of Japan's visiting deity traditions.

Kamozawa Kagura is a lion-dance tradition in Ōshū, Iwate, descended from Hayachine Kagura. It keeps 36 dances and, since 1872, an annual fire-warding house round.

A masked Buddhist sword dance performed at Chuson-ji in Hiraizumi to calm warriors slain in eleventh-century wars, part of the UNESCO-listed Furyu-odori tradition.

In Kitakami's Susumago district, dancers carry a Buddhist ringed staff and sound a conch shell between pieces, in a kagura descended from Shugendo mountain priests.

On June's second Saturday, about 70 farm horses with 700 bells each walk 14 km from Onikoshi Sōzen Shrine to Morioka Hachimangū — Selected Folk Property since 1978.

Selected in 1982 as an Intangible Folk Cultural Property requiring documentary preservation, the Customs of the Ogami-sama of the Southern Region preserve the spiritual practices of blind women shamans who served southern Iwate and northern Miyagi as channelers of the dead, healers, and diviners. Their sacred Oshira-sama figures and the head temple of their unique religious order, Daijoji in Ichinoseki, can still be visited today.

At Nitadori Hachiman Shrine in Ninohe, Iwate, a 400-year-old fire ritual foretells the year's harvest, read from drifting sparks and a frozen five-grain offering.

Hayachine Kagura, transmitted in Hanamaki, Iwate, is a 500-year-old sacred dance born from the mountain-ascetic tradition of Mount Hayachine. Comprising the Take and Otsugunai troupes, it preserves features of Japanese performing arts from before Noh was perfected. Designated a National Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1976 and inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009, it offers visitors a rare encounter with medieval Japanese ritual performance.

Yamaya no Taueodori is a nationally designated Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property preserved in the small farming hamlet of Yamaya in Shiwa Town, Iwate. Performed indoors around Small New Year, this 'parlor' rice-planting dance mimes a full agricultural year — sowing, transplanting, harvesting — to magically pre-celebrate the autumn harvest, and is celebrated for its graceful kasa-furi spinning flower hats and the comic interplay of the clown Ippachi.

Along Iwate's Sanriku coast, female diviners called miko once summoned deities to foretell harvests, dancing the sasa-no-mai to Kuromori Kagura music. Recorded 1993.

Mino Nagashi Niwaka is an improvisational comic street theater tradition in Mino City, Gifu Prefecture, with over 200 years of history dating to the late Edo period. Performed each April during the Mino Festival, troupes parade through the historic Udatsu townscape on decorated carts, stopping at street corners to deliver witty social satire in the local dialect. Designated as a prefectural and nationally selected intangible folk cultural property.

Takachiho Kagura is a nationally designated Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in Takachiho, Miyazaki Prefecture. Rooted in the myth of Amaterasu and the heavenly rock cave, thirty-three sacred dances are performed through the night at village lodges each winter. Takachiho Shrine offers four representative dances nightly year-round. In 2025, Kagura was selected as a candidate for UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage nomination.

Haraigawa no Kammai is an all-night kagura ritual that has been performed for over 400 years in Takaharu Town, Miyazaki Prefecture, as a sacred offering to Kirishima Higashi Shrine. Featuring warriors who grip real sword blades as they dance and a spectacular twelve-person sword performance, it was designated a National Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 2010.