Danjiri Event at Ueno Tenjin Festival

The Ueno Tenjin Festival Danjiri Events

The mask of the chief demon paraded through Iga's castle town each October was carved in the Momoyama period, more than four hundred years ago. So were the two "Eight-Heaven" masks (hatten) of Kon'ya-chō, signed on their interior with the engraver's name and the seal "Kanō," attributed to the late-16th-century mask carver Yamada Kihei. Once a year, in the autumn festival of Sugawara Shrine, these masks come out of their storehouses, are tied onto the faces of townspeople, and walk the same streets they have walked since the early Edo period.

The Ueno Tenjin Festival Danjiri Events (Ueno Tenjin Matsuri no Danjiri Gyōji) is held over three days in late October by the parishioners of Sugawara Shrine, popularly known as Ueno Tenjingū, in Iga City, Mie Prefecture. Two distinct demon processions, the procession of En no Gyōja and the procession of Chinzei Hachirō Tametomo, lead a line of nine ornately carved wooden floats called danjiri through the old castle town. The whole event was designated a national Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 2002 and inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016, as one of thirty-three "Yama, Hoko, Yatai float festivals."

Four Centuries of an Autumn Festival

Sugawara Shrine enshrines Sugawara no Michizane (845–903), the Heian-period statesman and poet later worshipped as a god of learning. The shrine itself originated as the tutelary deity of Heirakuji, a Buddhist temple complex on the hill that now bears Iga Ueno Castle. After the Tenshō Iga War of 1581, when Oda Nobunaga's forces destroyed Heirakuji, the deity was moved to its present location in Higashimachi during the redesign of the castle town. The Tōdō family, who entered Iga in 1608 under Tōdō Takatora and ruled the domain for the remainder of the Edo period, supported the shrine as the patron deity of their castle town.

The autumn festival was revived in Manji 3 (1660) after a period of disruption. Earlier records are scarce, but a haikai collection compiled by Hattori Dohō in 1690 mentions a costumed procession with an "Increase-and-Grow Heaven" (Zōchō-ten) mask, considered the earliest written trace of what would become the En no Gyōja procession. The mountain-ascetic theme made sense in context: Tōdō Takatora himself had eye trouble in old age and commissioned mountain prayers at the temple Daifukuji on Mount Atago. Local tradition holds that the carved Noh mask Akobujō worn today by the figure of En no Gyōja was a gift from Takatora himself, in thanks for the cure of his eyes.

The second demon procession, sent out by Tokui-chō, took shape about a century later. Sometime around 1798, a descendant of the warrior Minamoto no Tametomo who had moved from Iyo Province with the Tōdō family advised Tokui-chō residents on a new procession theme. The chosen subject was Chinzei Hachirō Tametomo (1139–1170), known in classical war tales as a giant of a man and an unbeatable archer, who according to one legend subdued the demon-descended residents of Hachijōjima with nothing but the threat of his bow. The float now leads the procession bearing a long bladed standard, the Kiō-kensaki, modelled on a sword called Kiōmaru forged by the smith Chikanori.

Why It Was Designated

Most large urban festivals in Japan center on either floats or costumed processions. The Ueno Tenjin Festival is unusual for placing both side by side, and for the way each procession pairs a marker object (the shirushi) with the procession itself. Each of the nine Danjiri towns brings out both a tall pole-and-figure marker and a wheeled float; the demon towns bring out the giant ōgohei wand or the Kiō-kensaki sword standard, followed by their costumed line. The cultural property designation in February 2002 cited this paired structure, along with the typological range of festival practices preserved in one town, as features of national importance.

The collection of masks also matters. Some seventy or so masks are used across the four demon towns, drawn from Noh and Kyōgen repertoires, from Buddhist processional theatre (gyōdō), and from local folk traditions. The oldest, including Kon'ya-chō's "Sword Heaven" and "Bow Heaven" pair signed by Yamada Kihei, date to the Momoyama period. The En no Gyōja mask itself is attributed to the second-generation Niroku Saemon of Ōmi Iseki, an early Edo-period carver. Together they make the procession a working museum of Japanese mask history, kept in active use rather than under glass.

What to Watch For

The festival builds across three days. On the first day, called Yoiyoiyama, each of the nine Danjiri towns assembles its float in front of the storehouse where it lives the rest of the year, attaches the ornaments, and lights paper lanterns and bonbori lamps after dark. The atmosphere is loose: visitors can walk right up to the floats and see how the carved panels, the embroidered hangings, and the tiered roofs are put together.

The second day, Ashizoroe no Gi, is essentially a public dress rehearsal. From the early afternoon, each Danjiri town hauls its float around its own neighborhood, and the demon procession practices the route along Sannocho-suji, the southernmost of the castle town's three east-west streets. Lanterns are lit again at night.

On the third day, the Shinkōsai or main procession, two mikoshi from the shrine leave the East Otabisho around 9 a.m. and head west along Honmachi-dōri. The demon procession follows. At the head walks the ōgohei, a five-coloured ceremonial wand 6.3 metres tall and weighing over 120 kilograms, carried by five men. Then come the akki, the hatten, the shiten, the figure of En no Gyōja with his mountain-ascetic robes, the guides, and finally the most beloved characters of the day: the hyorotsuki-oni, large clumsy demons with bells strapped to their backs who reel through the crowd trying to make small children cry. Local belief holds that the louder a child screams, the more robustly they will grow up.

After the demons come the nine danjiri in the order drawn by lots at the shrine on September 9. The floats have evocative names: Naginata-hoko (Halberd Pike) from Shinmachi, Kirimoto from Higashimachi, Sonojinzan from Nakamachi, Kakan from Nishimachi, Tetsueiken-hoko from Mukaijima-chō, Nitō from Kajimachi, Shirin from Uomachi, Komino-yama from Kodama-chō, and Sanmei from Fukui-chō. Because the wheels cannot turn, the float crews use a wooden jack called hōkō-manriki to lift the back wheels off the ground at each corner and pivot the float on its front axle. The corners near Sugawara Shrine, where the route turns three times in quick succession, are popular vantage points for this reason.

Around the Castle Town

For visitors arriving outside festival days, the Danjiri Kaikan (Float Hall), a five-minute walk from Uenoshi Station on the Iga Railway, displays three of the actual floats together with reproductions of the demon procession. Three of the nine danjiri are exhibited at any one time and rotated in April each year. The hall also has a wide-screen film of the festival itself, useful background for anyone who cannot time a visit to October.

The hall sits at the edge of Ueno Park, which contains the reconstructed keep of Iga Ueno Castle (1611, with one of the tallest stone walls in Japan), the Iga-ryū Ninja Museum with its trick house and shuriken demonstrations, and the Haiseiden, a hexagonal hall commemorating the poet Matsuo Bashō, who was born in Iga in 1644. A combined ticket covers the Float Hall, the Ninja Museum, and the castle for 1,500 yen.