Hojozu Hachiman Shrine Festival Float and Artificial

One Festival Rite, Designated by the State in 2021

Hojozu Hachiman Shrine Festival Float and Artificial (放生津八幡宮祭の曳山・築山行事) is held at the autumn festival of a shrine in Imizu City, Toyama Prefecture, and was designated by the state on 11 March 2021. Its category is that of important intangible folk cultural properties.

The custodian body is a preservation association for the floats and the built mountain.

The record gives the days of public performance as 30 September to 2 October each year.

A Mountain That Moves, and One That Stays

Within one festival, the mountain is treated in two ways.

The Agency records that it comprises a procession in which 13 floats go round the town together, and a rite in which a temporary mountain is set up in the shrine precinct and dressed with figures of gods and buddhas.

The floats move through the streets. The built mountain stands fixed in the precinct.

The record adds that these 2 mountain rites have been handed down through the Edo period to the present.

At Aogaki, the parts of the performance divide among performers by age: a division among people.

Here one thing, the mountain, divides into what moves and what stays. The name sets the 2 side by side.

The Same Float by Day and by Night

One float becomes another thing as the hour turns.

The Agency records that by day the floats are flower mountains, finely dressed with flowered parasols and figures, and by night lantern mountains, enclosed on all 4 sides by a great many lanterns, and so go round the old town centre in high spirits.

By day, parasols and figures; by night, lanterns on every side. The same float changes its dress and takes a second name.

At Rokuzankan, a museum puts one in mind of a church: one building suggesting another.

Here the change is actual, and made by the hour. Two names, flower mountain and lantern mountain, belong to one float.

The 13 go round together. Counting day and night, the town is traversed twice.

Display Figures Made Anew Each Year

Part of the rite is made over every year.

The Agency records that the spirit of the god is welcomed from the sea onto a stepped stand likened to a mountain, and that figures of the principal god and the four guardian kings are then set in place.

Before them, it continues, display figures present a scene drawn from a person or an event of local history, devised afresh each year and opened to the public.

The principal god and the four kings take the same places every year; only the figures before them change.

At the Himeshima obsidian source, two ages are set down side by side: two ways of measuring what does not change.

Here what stays and what is renewed share one stand. What is handed down is less a fixed form than the practice of making it over.

Visiting

The rite is held in Imizu City, Toyama Prefecture, in the keeping of its preservation association.

The record gives the days as 30 September to 2 October each year: the shrine's autumn festival.

The floats go round the old town centre; the built mountain stands in the shrine precinct.

The spirit is welcomed from the sea onto the stand. It is the festival of a town facing the water.

It is held as part of a festival, so dates and terms of viewing follow the custodian body's arrangements. Check before travelling.