Aogaki No Okina Sanbaso

One Ritual Performance, Selected by the State in 1974

Aogaki No Okina Sanbaso (青垣の翁三番叟) is a ritual performance handed down at Sawano, Aogaki, Hikami District, Hyogo Prefecture, and was selected by the state on 4 December 1974. Its category is that of intangible folk cultural properties for which measures such as documentation are to be taken.

The custodian body is a shrine festival preservation association.

The Agency records that it is performed on the ninth and tenth of October, at the shrine festival, on the stage within the precinct used for local plays.

Neither Designated Nor Registered, but Selected

The state's relation to this differs from what has come before.

The record gives a date of selection: 4 December 1974. Not designation, not registration.

The category itself states what is to be done: an intangible folk cultural property for which measures such as documentation are to be taken.

Under other categories, what is designated or registered endures as a thing.

This has no material form, so keeping it means making a record of it. Not a thing preserved, but a performance set down.

There is no owner field. In its place stands a custodian body: the people who carry the performance on.

Each Part Assigned by the Performer's Age

Who takes which part is settled by age.

The Agency records the performers as a boy for one part, a young man for the part of the old man, and a schoolboy for the third.

The part called the old man is taken by a young man.

The musicians, a flute and 2 hand drums, sit behind the curtain, and the chorus is taken by the drummers themselves. Before the curtain sits one who strikes the wooden clappers.

At Rumoi, the fishing gear is counted in 5 classes. Those are classes of implement.

Here it is people whose parts divide: those who perform, those who play, those who chant, and one who strikes the clappers.

The Chanting Comes from Behind the Curtain

Those whose voices are heard are not those who can be seen.

The Agency records that the opening passage is taken by the chorus behind the curtain, and that this is called chanting from the shadows.

The name means chanting from behind the curtain. The opening falls to those who cannot be seen.

The musicians too sit behind it. The striker of the clappers, by contrast, sits before it.

From a certain line onward the chanting passes to the boy's part, the record adds, with the clappers sounding freely throughout.

Seen and unseen: the parts divide by where the performer sits.

Visiting

The performance is handed down at Sawano, Aogaki, Hikami District, Hyogo Prefecture, in the keeping of a shrine festival preservation association.

The Agency records that performances of this kind are found around Aogaki: the same sort of thing survives nearby.

It continues that, with those of the coastal district, these are ritual performances surviving where local plays flourished, and are thought to descend from players who once travelled from village to village.

A lion dance opens the festival, and this follows. All the performers first go to the shrine hall to be purified.

It is performed as part of a festival, so dates and terms of viewing follow the custodian body's arrangements. Check before travelling.