Intangible Folk Cultural Properties Requiring Documentation of Kochi

The Enko Festival, held each June along the Ushirokawa River in Nankoku City, Kochi Prefecture, is a rare folk ritual where children build riverside shrines of sweet flag leaves and offer cucumbers and sake to appease a kappa-like water spirit called Enko, praying for safety from drowning.

Hongawa Kagura is an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property performed in the remote Hongawa district of Ino Town, Kochi Prefecture. For approximately five centuries since 1523, at the foot of the sacred Mount Ishizuchi, masked gods have descended from the darkness in a night-long ritual dance performed on shrine stages. Eighteen pieces including purification dances, mythological dramas, and acrobatic sword and halberd dances preserve some of Japan's most archaic kagura traditions.