Intangible Folk Cultural Properties Requiring Documentation of Yamagata

In Shinjo City, Yamagata, seven solo dancers in long curtains embody the Japanese serow, not the usual deer, a rarity among shishi dances performed each August.

Each February, amateur villagers in Sakata perform kabuki on a roofless stage as snow falls, a winter offering to Hie Shrine and a national folk cultural property.

A masked yamabushi dance on three August nights at Kumano Shrine in Yuza, Yamagata, Sugisawa Hiyama preserves forms older than Noh and is a national treasure.

Below Mt. Haguro, four spring ritual dances at Raiden Shrine carry on medieval temple ennen, a Tsuruoka tradition the state selected for documentation in 1973.

Discover Keyaki Kyodai, a rare folk custom preserved for over 200 years in the small coastal village of Hamanaka, Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture. In this unique tradition, young girls draw rice-straw lots to form lifelong bonds of sworn sisterhood — ties even stronger than blood. Designated as a nationally recognized intangible folk cultural property in 1993, this custom reveals the deep communal bonds that sustained women throughout their lives in traditional rural Japan.

In Yamagata's Murayama region, blind women called Onakama once summoned the dead. Their head temple was the Iwaya Kannon; 951 of their objects survive in Nakayama.

Amahage is a traditional visiting deity ritual in Yuza Town, Yamagata Prefecture, where young men wearing demon and elder masks with thick straw cloaks called kendan visit homes during New Year to admonish laziness and pray for good health. Designated as an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1999, it was inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2018 as part of 'Raihōshin: Ritual Visits of Deities in Masks and Costumes.'

Warabioka Ennen, seven medieval dances performed each 3 May at Omonoimi Shrine in Yuza, Yamagata, grew from mountain asceticism and use Kamakura-era masks.