Takeo's Wild Dance

A Sword Dance Kept Alive in Three Saga Villages

The Araodori of Takeo is a folk performing art held in just three small communities of Saga Prefecture, on the western side of Kyushu. Once a year, around the autumn equinox in late September, dancers assemble in the precincts of a neighborhood shrine and perform a circle dance that the area has carried for roughly four and a half centuries. On 17 May 1977 the Agency for Cultural Affairs registered it as an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property, naming the versions preserved in the districts of Takase, Nakano, and Utode.

Three local associations keep the practice going, one for each village: the Takase, Nakano, and Utode Araodori Preservation Societies. Their names appear on the official designation alongside the property itself.

The dance was once far more widespread. Before the Second World War it lived in around twenty settlements across the old Takeo domain. Today only these three groups still perform it.

Two Stories of How It Began

Where the araodori came from has never been settled, and the families who maintain it are careful to say as much. Local memory offers more than one account.

The first places the origin in 1530. As that version runs, the Arima clan of Shimabara advanced on Takeo and pushed toward Sumiyoshi Castle. Goto Suminaki, the eighteenth lord of Takeo, broke the assault with a night raid, and his foot soldiers danced where they stood to mark the win.

The second account is less cheerful. In 1563 the Arima invited Goto Takaaki, the nineteenth lord, to Shimabara, intending to have him killed. Takaaki arrived prepared. He had his retainers come dressed in dancing costume, and once the formal courtesies were finished, the company began to perform. The lord danced his way out of the gathering and escaped. The dance staged that day, tradition holds, was the araodori. If the story carries any weight, the dance had already settled into a recognized form by the middle of the 16th century.

The name itself suits a performance with a hard edge. Ara carries the sense of rough or fierce. Dancers wear a long and a short sword at the waist, as a samurai retainer would, and the style belongs to the family of yakko-odori, dances that borrow the bearing of the attendants who marched in a feudal lord's procession.

Why the State Recognized It

Japan reserves the category of Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property for customs and performing arts judged essential to understanding the country's way of life. The araodori earned its place on two grounds the Agency set out plainly.

One is the quality of the transmission. The choreography, the roles, and the sung verses have come down with unusual consistency, and the texts in particular are regarded as old. The other is regional character. The forceful footwork, the closed-circle formation, and the emotional weight of the lyrics belong to this corner of Saga and to nowhere else in quite the same shape. The designation also recognized that the brisk power of the araodori sits in genuine balance with the more refined pieces performed around it.

How the Dance Is Built

Two roles organize everything. At the center stand the mossho, the leaders who set the tempo and direct the figures. The characters used to write the word can be read as "fierce general," a small echo of the dance's military past. The mossho are themselves split into two or three front leaders and one or two who stand behind. Around them the remaining dancers, the kaki, form a closed ring. The word means a fence or hedge, and that is exactly what they make: a human wall enclosing the leaders.

The accompaniment comes from a flute, a hand gong, a small laced drum the villages call the moryashi, and a large drum, with a line of singers added. The dancers move to the singers' verses rather than to a fixed count.

Set two villages side by side and the contrast is easy to read. Utode and Takase dance in a plain, forceful manner that recalls the stances of martial practice. Nakano's version is softer, and the hand movements are its particular signature. The same dance carries two temperaments.

The araodori is not performed in isolation on the day. Lighter furyu pieces are set around it, among them the sanbaso, a celebratory dance with roots in the theater, and the zeni-daiko, an elegant routine danced with a coin-rattle drum. The pairing is intentional. The blunt strength of the araodori gains its edge from the grace of what surrounds it.

Visiting on the Day

The araodori is offered on the autumn equinox, the central day of the Buddhist higan observance, which falls around 23 September. Each village dances at its own tutelary shrine: Takase at Matsuo Shrine, Nakano at Iwai Hachiman Shrine, and Utode at Shoichii Shrine. The three shrines lie within a short drive of one another, so a determined visitor can catch parts of more than one performance in a single afternoon. Schedules shift from year to year and rain can move a performance indoors, so it is worth checking the current details with the Takeo City tourism office before setting out.

All three shrines sit about ten minutes by car from Takeo-Onsen Station on the JR line, and a similar distance from the Takeo-Kitagata interchange on the Nagasaki Expressway. The town of Takeo is a hot-spring resort of long standing; the gate of Takeo Onsen, a vermilion structure that has itself been designated an Important Cultural Property, makes an easy stop on the same trip. Takeo Shrine and its ancient camphor tree, and the landscaped garden of Mifuneyama Rakuen, are both close by and reward an extra hour.