Onosaka

Dai no Saka: A Slow, Mournful Bon Dance from the Snow Country of Niigata

For three nights each August, a tower of round logs about six meters tall is raised in the grounds of Hachiman Shrine in Horinouchi, a former post town in Uonuma City, Niigata. A single drum sits at the top, lanterns hang from its four corners, and a long hexagonal paper lantern is suspended at the center with verses of a dance song written down its sides. Below it, people move in a slow circle to a song that is closer to a Buddhist chant than to the bright, up-tempo music most visitors expect from a Japanese summer festival.

This is Dai no Saka, a bon dance held on August 14, 15, and 16, the days of the Obon observance when the spirits of the dead are believed to return home. It was designated a national Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1998, and in 2022 it joined the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity as one of the dances grouped under Furyū-odori.

A Dance Said to Have Arrived with the Cloth Merchants

Horinouchi sits in a heavy-snow region of the Uonuma area, on the old Mikuni Kaidō, the highway that linked Echigo Province with Edo. In the early modern period the town prospered as a relay station on that road and, together with the nearby towns of Ojiya and Tōkamachi, as a market center for Echigo-chijimi, the fine crinkled ramie cloth of the region.

No document records exactly how the dance began. By local tradition, it was carried home by the chijimi merchants who traveled back and forth to the Kamigata region around Kyoto and Osaka on business, picking up songs and dances along the way. During the festival nights of the early modern era, lanterns were hung at every house, and people danced through the streets until dawn from a point near the town's honjin, the official lodging for traveling officials. Wealthier households are said to have set out food and drink to keep the dancing going.

The dance did not survive unbroken. It faded from the late Meiji through the Taishō era, affected by the upheaval of the Boshin War and by an early-Meiji ban on such gatherings. Young people of Horinouchi revived it in the early Shōwa period, reconstructing the songs and steps. War interrupted it again, from the Second Sino-Japanese War until the end of the Second World War, after which it was brought back once more and has continued since.

The Song, the Drum, and the Seven-Beat Rhythm

What sets Dai no Saka apart is its sound. The dance song is sung slowly over a seven-beat drum pattern, and fifteen verses survive, each in a five-five-seven-five meter. Two groups of lead singers take turns, trading the lines of each verse back and forth in a call-and-response style, and a single verse can stretch past two minutes. The flute interludes heard between verses today are not ancient; they were added when the dance was reconstructed in the early Shōwa years.

The name comes straight from the words of the song. Each verse opens with the phrase Dai no Saka, nanamagari, and the dance simply took its title from that first line. Every one of the fifteen verses also contains the phrase Namu Saihō, an invocation of the Western Paradise of Amida Buddha. Because of this, and because the melody follows the slow cadence of a Buddhist goeika hymn, the dance is also known as a nenbutsu odori, a dance of prayer. People here still understand it plainly as a dance for the repose of ancestors rather than as entertainment.

The movement matches the music. The footwork and hand gestures are simple, keyed to the seven beats of the drum, and the whole circle turns to the left. Older accounts describe dancers performing with lotus leaves balanced on their heads, an image that suggests how unhurried the steps are. There is little of the show or flourish of a city festival here. The effect is plain and old-fashioned, with a quiet grace and an undertone of sadness running through the song.

Why It Was Designated

Dai no Saka was recognized for preserving the character of an older kind of bon dance, one tied directly to the memorial of the dead, at a time when many regional bon dances have shifted toward recreation. Its survival through bans, war, and two long interruptions, kept alive each time by local effort, is part of what makes it valuable, as are the regional traits that distinguish it from bon dances elsewhere.

The 2022 UNESCO listing placed Dai no Saka among forty-one Furyū-odori from twenty-four prefectures, all of them already designated as Important Intangible Folk Cultural Properties. Furyū-odori are group dances that grew popular from the late Muromachi into the early modern period, performed to drums, flutes, and gongs, and carrying prayers for warding off misfortune, for good harvests, for rain, and for the souls of the dead. The grouping was added to an existing entry, Chakkirako of Kanagawa, which had been listed in 2009.

Watching, and Joining In

The dance is open. Visitors are welcome to step into the circle rather than only watch from the edge, and there is no costume rule; a yukata with zōri sandals is the traditional choice, but ordinary clothes are fine. Anyone who wants to follow the steps can fall in behind a more experienced dancer and pick up the slow, repeating pattern over a verse or two.

Horinouchi is reached easily by train. The shrine grounds are about five minutes on foot from Echigo-Horinouchi Station on the JR Jōetsu Line, and roughly seven minutes by car from the Horinouchi interchange on the Kan-etsu Expressway. Parking near the venue is limited, so drivers are asked to use the lot at the Horinouchi branch of Uonuma City Hall and walk in. The dancing takes place in the evening, so an early dinner in town leaves time to arrive before it begins.

The surrounding area rewards a longer stay. Uonuma is famous for its Koshihikari rice, grown in the snowmelt-fed paddies of the region, and the mountains around Horinouchi turn to strong color in autumn. The same town also holds a separate Jūgoya festival in September, with decorated floats and hayashi music, for travelers whose timing does not match the August dates.