Masuda's Flower-Catching Dance

Masuda no Hanatori Odori: A Sword Dance for the Dead in Southern Ehime

Once a year, on the eleventh day of the seventh lunar month, dancers gather at Kōzan Shrine (高山神社) in the hamlet of Masuda, near the southern tip of Ehime Prefecture, carrying long swords with live blades, short swords, sickles, and lengths of fresh-cut green bamboo. They strike these implements against one another in interlocking patterns, weaving the hard ring of steel against steel into something closer to a slow, deliberate choreography. The performance is called the Masuda no Hanatori Odori, and it belongs to a family of sword dances spread across old Iyo and Tosa provinces, the historical names for Ehime and neighboring Kōchi.

The hamlet sits in Ainan, a town occupying the far southwestern corner of Shikoku where the Pacific meets the Bungo Channel. Masuda was part of the former village of Ipponmatsu until a 2004 municipal merger folded it into Ainan. The dance has stayed put through all of that, tied to the same shrine and the same date on the old calendar.

What the Designation Recognizes

On August 5, 1972, the national government placed the Masuda no Hanatori Odori on its register of Intangible Folk Cultural Properties Requiring Documentation. This is a category distinct from the better-known Important Intangible Folk Cultural Properties. Rather than conferring the highest tier of protection, the selection marks a tradition judged valuable enough that the state should ensure its records, movements, music, and ritual sequence are documented before they can be lost. The custodian of the dance is the Hanatori Odori Preservation Society, the body responsible for teaching it to each new set of performers.

What drew official attention was the dance's regional character. Across Iyo and Tosa, sword dances took on different emphases. In Tosa they leaned toward prayers for victory and good harvests and kept the plain name "tachi odori," or sword dance. In Iyo the same form turned toward thanksgiving for the harvest, memorial rites for the dead, and the lifting of vows made to the gods, and there it came to be called "hanatori odori." Masuda's version carries that Iyo accent strongly, and its particular sequence of movements is considered a distinct local lineage rather than a generic example of the type.

How the Dance Unfolds

The program runs in five named parts: sai-barai, dewa, shu-dachi, kama-kodachi, and hichimede. The opening sai-barai is the part most worth waiting for. It contains a spoken exchange in the manner of a yamabushi mondō, the formalized question-and-answer once traded by mountain ascetics. Two figures named Nankō-in and Zenkyū-bō take the parts, calling and answering across the dancing ground before the blades begin their work.

The full sequence is danced not once but three times, and each round is dedicated to a different purpose. The first is an offering to the shrine's enshrined deity. The second is a memorial for the Chiyoboshi Yasaburō brothers, figures from local memory. The third asks for the safety of the community. After the third round comes a closing dance that releases the vows made during the rite, sending the performers home and the gathering to its end.

The implements repay close watching. The long swords are not stage props but real blades, fitted onto extended handles and dressed with strips of white paper, the kind of folded paper streamers seen at Shinto shrines. As the dancers turn, the white paper and the bright metal move together, the rigid against the soft. In related dances of the region performers have been known to slice through a sacred rope strung across the ground, a flourish that shows the swords are no ornament.

Seeing It in Person

The dance keeps to the old lunar calendar, falling on the eleventh day of the seventh lunar month, which lands in late summer on the modern calendar. Ainan publishes the date among its yearly events under the name Masuda Hanatori Odori, so confirming the year's date with the town's tourism office before traveling is the safest course. Ainan hosts a second, separate sword dance as well, the Masaki Hanatori Odori in the tenth lunar month, so it helps to be clear about which one you are coming to see.

Reaching this corner of Shikoku takes some planning. Ainan lies well south of Uwajima, the nearest sizable city and railhead, with the final stretch covered by bus or car along the coast. The town is known for its bonito, landed twice a year as the spring katsuo and the returning autumn katsuo, and for the Ainan Gold citrus grown on its slopes. A visit timed to the dance pairs naturally with the food and the long Pacific coastline.

The wider tradition that the Masuda dance belongs to, the furyū folk dances of Japan, gained international recognition in 2022 when a group of them was inscribed by UNESCO. The Masuda dance is not among that inscribed group, but seeing it offers a close look at the same current of folk performance, kept alive in one small place by the people who live there.