Niijima's Great Dance

Niijima no Ōodori: A Masked August Dance on a Pacific Exile Island

On the evening of August 15, in the temple grounds of Chōei-ji on Niijima, a line of men file in behind paper lanterns. Each wears a wide hat hung all around with a cloth called kaba, so that no face is visible. They carry no swords and no torches, only folding fans. A rope has been strung in a circle on the ground, and once the dancers step inside it and close the ring, the Ōodori begins. There is no orchestra. A single drum sounds at the close of each song, and otherwise the dancers move only to the voices of the singers, who stretch their vowels into long, drawn-out lines.

Niijima sits in the Pacific about 150 kilometers south of central Tokyo, yet it remains part of the metropolis. The dance kept here is one of the older surviving forms of furyū folk dance in Japan, and in 2022 it was written into UNESCO's roster of intangible cultural heritage. For visitors, it is a rare chance to watch a community festival that has never been turned into a stage show.

Two villages, two nights

The Ōodori belongs to two settlements on the same island. Honson occupies the central western coast and is the older of the two. Wakago lies along the northern western shore and was opened in 1711 by families who moved north from Honson. Each village keeps its own version of the dance, and each performs it on its own night during the Bon season.

Wakago dances first, on the night of August 14, in the grounds of Myōren-ji temple. Honson follows on the evening of August 15, at Chōei-ji. The two are close cousins rather than copies. The basic steps are shared, but the color of the kaba cloth differs, as do the number of pieces in the repertoire and even the height at which the dancers carry their hips. Locals call the Honson dance the honsai shūgi-odori, a celebratory Bon dance, while in Wakago it is known simply as the Bon dance.

An island of exiles, and a dance whose origins are uncertain

No record fixes the year the dance arrived. The accepted view is that it descends from the furyū dances that swept Japan from the late Muromachi period into the early Edo period. The lyrics support that lineage: many of the songs are written in the manner of Muromachi kouta, short popular songs, and a good number of them are about love.

Niijima carries a particular history that colors the dance. For roughly two centuries during the Edo period, the island served as a place of exile. Convicts and political prisoners were sent here from the mainland, and the island developed a distinct culture around them. The Ōodori is often counted among the arts tied to that exile community. One local tradition holds that exiles taught the islanders the dance; another says the dancers cover their faces because it was exiles who performed it. These are stories handed down rather than documented facts, but they explain why the dance is read on Niijima as an emblem of its exile heritage.

Japan's national government recognized the dance as an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property on February 21, 2005. On November 30, 2022, it was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity as one of 41 furyū-odori across the country grouped under a single listing.

What the dancers wear, and why it matters

Only men dance the Ōodori. A dancer puts on the wide hat with its curtain of kaba cloth, a crested kimono worn loose, a stiff kaku-obi sash, and over that a thin braided cord. The cloth is purple in Honson and red in Wakago. A long, brightly colored cord trails from the head down the back. Dancers wear no shoes, only white tabi socks against the bare ground.

At the waist hangs an inrō, a small lacquered case. On Niijima the inrō is not decoration. It is the token of admission to the dance ground: without one you cannot join the dance, and in fact anyone who enters the marked circle at all, dancer or not, is required to wear it. In Wakago, women write their own names on the kaba cloth as an act of purification.

Two objects are raised at the edge of the dance ground and left standing throughout. One is the kasabōroku, a large umbrella draped with kaba cloth, from whose interior hang strips of fabric, a mirror, scissors, a bell, and bundles of women's hair offered in prayer for good health. The other is the kama, a sickle fixed to the top of a long pole. In Honson the sickle is wrapped with rope; in Wakago it is left bare. Both objects are understood as guards against evil.

How the dance is built

Honson keeps three pieces in performance today: Yakushoiri-odori, Ofuku-odori, and Ise-odori. Wakago keeps four: Yakushoiri-odori, Bizen-odori, Aogamaru, and Ise-odori. The opening and closing pieces are shared by both villages, and the order never changes. A session always begins with Yakushoiri-odori and always ends with Ise-odori.

Every piece but the closing Ise-odori is danced with a fan; Ise-odori alone is a hand dance. The way the fan is held is precise. A dancer hooks the index finger over a rib of the fan and rests the thumb beside it, holding so lightly that the fan swings slowly and loosely with the arm. The recurring movements carry their own names, among them tsuki-ōgi, aogi, tsukkomu, utcharu, sute-ōgi, kakae-ōgi, and sukui-dashi. The dance is assembled by combining these set figures. None of them illustrates the words being sung. The motion runs on its own track, independent of the lyrics.

This is where the two villages part company most clearly. Wakago dancers bend the knees, drop the center of gravity low, and move in large, slow, rolling swells. Honson dancers carry their hips a little higher and keep the fan work somewhat smaller. Stand and watch both and the family resemblance is unmistakable, but so is the difference in weight and reach.

Getting there and what else to see

Reaching Niijima is half the experience. A high-speed jetfoil from Takeshiba Pier in central Tokyo takes roughly two and a half hours; a small 19-seat propeller plane from Chofu Airport covers the same distance in about 40 minutes, and an overnight passenger ferry from Takeshiba is the slowest and cheapest option. The island is well known among surfers for the long white beach at Habushiura, and for buildings and statues carved from kōga stone, a pale local rock found in very few places on earth. The Moyai statues scattered around the island, and the famous one outside Shibuya Station in Tokyo, are both made from it.

If your visit does not fall on the August festival dates, the Niijima Village Museum in Honson is the place to understand the dance. It displays life-size figures of dancers in both the Honson and Wakago costumes and runs a video corner showing the Ōodori in motion. The festival itself is held outdoors and is called off in rain, so a plan to see it live should allow for flexible dates.