Chaguchagu Horse

Chagu Chagu Umakko: A Procession of Bells Across the Iwate Countryside

On the second Saturday of every June, roughly seventy farm horses dressed in red, indigo, and yellow leave a small shrine at the foot of Mount Iwate and walk fourteen kilometres into the city of Morioka. Each horse carries about seven hundred bells. The sound they make as they move — a soft, layered jingling that locals transcribe as chagu chagu — gives the event its name and travels far across the rice paddies on a still summer day.

Chagu Chagu Umakko (the suffix ko is a Tōhoku diminutive, an affectionate touch applied here to the horse rather than the rider) is one of Iwate Prefecture's signature seasonal events. It was selected in 1978 by the Agency for Cultural Affairs as an Intangible Folk Cultural Property requiring measures such as documentation, and the bell sound itself was added to the Ministry of the Environment's "100 Soundscapes of Japan to Preserve" in 1996 — a separate honour that few festivals can claim. The procession links Onikoshi Sōzen Shrine in Takizawa City to Morioka Hachimangū in Morioka, taking roughly four hours to complete.

Horses, farmers, and a wolf-deterring bell

Iwate has been associated with fine horses since the Nara period. By the Edo era, the domain of the Nanbu clan was famous for its Nanbu-goma — large, sturdy animals prized first for the military and later for ploughing the cold rice fields of the Tōhoku interior. So central was the horse to daily life that local families built the distinctive Nanbu magari-ya, L-shaped farmhouses in which the stable shared a roof with the main living quarters. Warmth from the family hearth reached the horse stalls; the horse, in turn, was treated as a member of the household.

From this attachment came the custom of Sōzen-mairi: a pilgrimage to the local shrine of Sōzen-sama, a folk deity believed to watch over horses. According to legend, Sōzen was an unusually skilled horse healer and breeder in ancient Tōhoku whose name endured as a guardian spirit. At Onikoshi Sōzen Shrine in present-day Takizawa, farmers brought their animals to pray for safety and good health, choosing the old fifth-day-of-the-fifth-month festival — a brief rest in an otherwise punishing rice-planting calendar.

Around the Kansei era of the late eighteenth century, owners began dressing their horses in konida-shōzoku, the ceremonial pack-horse trappings once used by daimyō processions on the long road to Edo. The combination of farmers' affection and feudal pageantry produced what we now see: a working horse decked out as if it were carrying treasure for a lord. A donut-shaped brass bell called the nariwa hangs at the throat, a remnant of the larger bells once used to scare off bears and wolves in the mountains; on open ground its sound is said to carry four kilometres.

Why the festival matters

The 1978 designation recognised something specific: a folk practice in which the relationship between humans and a working animal had survived into the age of tractors. The Agency for Cultural Affairs assigns this category to traditions that risk fading and therefore warrant systematic documentation, and Chagu Chagu Umakko fits the description with painful accuracy. In 1990 the procession included 102 dressed horses; today the count hovers around sixty to seventy, and Takizawa City now keeps municipally owned mares to ensure foals will continue to be available for future processions.

The costumes themselves are part of what is being protected. Each set is hemp, hand-stitched, dyed with regional shikon indigo or plant dyes, and assembled in a fixed order: nariwa first, then breast strap, crupper, neck armour, brow shade, nose cover, ear bags, halter, and finally the long fluttering streamer called fukinagashi. The patterns vary household by household, passed down through families. Workshops to teach the technique are held in the quiet winter months, when farm work eases off. No two horses arrive at the shrine dressed alike.

What you'll see on the day

The horses gather at Onikoshi Sōzen Shrine from around 8:00 a.m. for a safety prayer ceremony. Departure is typically at 9:30 a.m. Children — sometimes very small ones, tied securely to the saddle with a sash — ride on top, while the families lead from the bridle. The route descends gently from the slopes below Mount Iwate, passes through the new town of Takizawa, crosses the Yuugaose Bridge into Morioka, then proceeds along Ōdōri's shopping arcade before arriving at Morioka Hachimangū around 1:45 p.m.

The best vantage points depend on what you want from the day. For mountain backdrops and quieter crowds, position yourself near the starting shrine in the first hour. For the most photogenic urban scene, the riverside at Nakatsugawa River — where roughly forty horses are tethered along the embankment around midday — offers the procession alongside the city's old quarter. If you want the closing ceremony at the destination shrine, aim for Morioka Hachimangū in the afternoon.

Two other elements worth knowing: a related New Year procession (hatsumōde) brings dressed horses to Onikoshi Sōzen Shrine on January 1, on a smaller scale and against the contrast of snow. And the poet Miyazawa Kenji — born in nearby Hanamaki — recorded his impression of seeing the horses cross the Shimono-hashi bridge in Morioka in a tanka, using the lively variants changa-changa-umako and chaga-chaga-umako to capture their rhythm.

Around the festival

The day rewards visitors who arrive a little early or stay a little late. Big Roof Takizawa, the civic complex near the start of the route, hosts pre-departure exhibitions, demonstrations of the local Komaodori horse dance, and a chance to see the costumes being fitted from around 7:00 a.m. In central Morioka, Morioka Castle Site Park lies a short walk from the procession's late afternoon stops, with its distinctive granite ramparts — unusual for the earth-banked castles of northern Japan — set in a public garden of seasonal flowers.

For deeper context on the human-horse relationship that the festival commemorates, Nanbu Magari-ya Fujikura House, a preserved L-shaped farmhouse in Takizawa, shows how families and horses once shared a single structure. Tezukuri Mura, on the outskirts of Morioka, sells the small wooden Chagu Chagu Umakko folk toys that have been made by local craftspeople since the late 1940s — the horse as souvenir, painted in the same colours as the real ones.