Intangible Folk Cultural Properties Requiring Documentation of Iwate

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.

Iwate’s registered properties across designations, with featured heritage and travel notes.

The complete kokuhō catalogue — browse by prefecture, period, and category.

Nationwide jūyō bunkazai — architecture, sculpture, painting, crafts, and documents.