Sugisawa Hiyama

Sugisawa Hiyama: Mountain-Ascetic Dance Beneath the Slopes of Mount Chokai

For three nights each August, in the grounds of Kumano Shrine in the village of Sugisawa, dancers in masks and bright costumes step onto a wooden stage open on three sides to the night air. A large drum, a flute, and a pair of copper cymbals carry the rhythm while a chanter sings the words. This is Sugisawa Hiyama, a form of bangaku handed down in the Sugisawa district of Yuza, a town in the far north of Yamagata Prefecture, at the foot of Mount Chokai.

Bangaku is the name given on the Japan Sea side of northern Honshu to the kagura once danced by yamabushi, the ascetic practitioners of mountain religion. Along the Pacific coast the same lineage of dance is called yamabushi kagura. The version preserved around the base of Mount Chokai carries its own local name, Hiyama.

A Dance Older Than Noh

No document records when Sugisawa Hiyama began. What survives in the dance itself points to great age. Specialists note that it preserves features from a period before Noh took its finished form, which places its roots at least as far back as the Kamakura period (1185–1333).

The shrine where it is performed explains much of its origin. Kumano Shrine in Sugisawa was once called Chokaisan Ninoji Kumano Daigongen, and it served as the second lodge for ascetics climbing Mount Chokai as a site of religious training. The mountain was treated as a sacred peak, and the priests who entered it brought their dances with them. As mountain asceticism around Chokai declined over the centuries, the dances passed quietly into the hands of the villagers, who have kept them going ever since.

The name Hiyama itself has never been pinned down. One explanation holds that Mount Chokai was regarded as the "sun mountain" in contrast to nearby Gassan, the "moon mountain," and that the dance took its name from that pairing. Another links it to Chokai's nature as a volcano, a "fire mountain." Both readings remain conjecture.

The Night a Folklorist Took Notice

Sugisawa Hiyama might have stayed a strictly local affair were it not for the summer of 1930. On his first journey through the Tohoku region, the folklorist Orikuchi Shinobu watched the honmai, the main night of dancing, on August 15 and came away deeply struck by what he had seen. He sent word at once to the performing-arts researchers Kodera Yukichi and Honda Yasuji, who arrived in time to see the closing kamiokuri ceremony on August 20.

The attention of these scholars changed the dance's fortunes within months. That November the troupe traveled to Tokyo and performed at the Nihon Seinenkan during the tenth-anniversary festival of Meiji Shrine, an appearance said to have come about through Orikuchi's recommendation. Two days later, on November 6, they gave a full solo program at the Noh stage of Yasukuni Shrine, hosted by a society devoted to folk performing arts. After that visit to the capital, the name Sugisawa Hiyama was known across the country.

Why It Is Designated

Sugisawa Hiyama was named a National Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property on May 22, 1978. Among the many bangaku traditions of the region, it stood out for the clean, refined shape of its forms and the sharp clarity of its dancing, qualities judged to give it high artistic value.

Its deeper importance lies in what it preserves. The dances contain elements drawn from several kinds of performing art that existed before Noh was consolidated as a form, which makes Sugisawa Hiyama a rare window onto the stagecraft of an earlier age. For scholars of Japanese performance history, it ranks among the most significant survivals of its kind.

What You Will See

The repertoire once numbered twenty-four pieces. Fourteen are still transmitted today, and a complete performance of them runs to roughly four hours. Some pieces are danced only on particular nights. The fourteen are Bangaku, Mikagura, Okina, Sanbaso, Kagemasa, Warabiori, Soga, Torimai, Kagekiyo, Hashihiki, Oeyama, Shinobu, Takatoki, and Shojo.

The crowd-pleaser is Shojo, the dance of the legendary red-faced sake spirit, in which the performer drops into a handstand and circles the stage three times on his hands. Other pieces shift in mood from the vigorous to the solemn over the course of an evening. Younger dancers take part as well, with some numbers performed by children of elementary, junior high, and high school age, a deliberate effort to pass the tradition to the next generation.

The music is spare and steady. A large drum sets the pulse, a flute carries the melody, copper cymbals mark the beat, and a chanter delivers the sung text that the dancers move to. The performance space is the open three-sided stage set within the shrine precinct, lit against the dark of a quiet mountain village, with the summer stars overhead.

The Setting and Getting There

Yuza sits in the northwest corner of Yamagata, where the rice plains meet the broad cone of Mount Chokai. The mountain and the nearby island of Tobishima together form a recognized geopark, and the area rewards visitors with hot springs, coastal scenery, and shrine architecture tied to the old Chokai pilgrimage routes.

The three performances fall during the Obon season in August, when families across Japan honor their ancestors, and the timing reflects a long-standing link between the dance and local belief. The dates are fixed: August 6 for the shikumi opening, August 15 for the main night, and August 20 for the send-off. On the 15th an additional dedication, the Okashira-mai, takes place earlier in the evening.

The venue is the grounds of Kumano Shrine. By car it is about thirty minutes from the Sakata-Minato interchange; visitors can park free at the Kataribe-no-Yakata lot, and roadside parking is not permitted. By train, the shrine is a forty-minute walk from JR Yuza Station, and a taxi is the easier choice.