Warabioka Ennen

Warabioka Ennen: A Medieval Dance Still Performed at the Foot of Mt. Chōkai

On the third of May each year, in a wooden hall in the precinct of Chōkaisan Ōmonoimi Shrine's Warabioka Kuchi-no-miya, a dancer in a fierce, ornately carved mask crosses the floor to the sound of flute and drum. The mask used for the role of Ryōō is thought to have been carved in the Kamakura period, some seven hundred years ago. This is Warabioka Ennen, a set of seven dances handed down at the southern foot of Mt. Chōkai in the town of Yuza, in the far north of Yamagata Prefecture.

Ennen is a form of ceremonial performing art that took shape at large temples during Japan's medieval centuries, usually staged after Buddhist services and combining dance, song, and short dramatic pieces. Most ennen traditions died out long ago. The Warabioka version survives because it was bound up with something larger: the practice of Shugendō, the mountain asceticism that made Mt. Chōkai a sacred peak.

The dances themselves carry the look and structure of bugaku, the courtly dance brought to Japan from the Asian continent. Pieces such as Ryōō and Taiheiraku belong to that older court repertoire, which is why a folk performance in a rural shrine can feel, at moments, like a window onto the Heian court.

From Mountain Ascetics to Shrine Parishioners

Kami-Warabioka, the village where the dances are kept, was once a settlement of mountain ascetics known as Kamidera, the "upper temple." At its height it held thirty-three lodges, with Ryūzu-ji as the head temple. From here, pilgrims and ascetics climbed the southern route up Mt. Chōkai, which was worshipped as a living deity.

Within this community the dancing was not entertainment but a rite of passage. It fell to the eldest sons of the lodging houses, the lineage of monk-followers who would one day rise to the rank of daisendatsu, the senior leader of the ascetics. A boy entered the cycle at the age of three, carried into the festival as a dakichigo. Between the ages of seven and fifteen he performed the children's dances, including the piece called Dōhō. After that the dancing became part of the rigorous training of the yamabushi, the mountain ascetic, passed from master to disciple according to a fixed order.

The Meiji-era separation of Shinto and Buddhism in 1870 dismantled the old ascetic order. Rather than disappear, the dances were reframed in Shinto terms and continued as a votive offering at Ōmonoimi Shrine's Warabioka Kuchi-no-miya. Today they are kept by the Warabioka Ennen Preservation Society, formed by the parishioners of that shrine.

Why It Was Recognized

The Agency for Cultural Affairs selected Warabioka Ennen on 2 February 1991 as an Intangible Folk Cultural Property requiring documentation, a national category for traditions judged important enough to record and support. Two years later, in 1993, Yamagata Prefecture designated it an intangible folk cultural property in its own right.

What earns the dances this standing is their age and their lineage. The wooden masks for Ryōō and its paired dance Nasori are read by specialists as Kamakura-period work, evidence that the tradition reaches back to the Middle Ages. Few rural performances retain bugaku pieces in a form this old, and fewer still preserve the link between courtly dance, temple ennen, and mountain asceticism in a single living event.

What to Watch For

Seven dances make up the current program: Enbu, Dōyari, Dōhō, Tanairi, Ryōō, Gusha, and Taiheiraku. The order moves from the quieter children's pieces toward the more dramatic masked dances.

Ryōō rewards close attention. It descends from the continental court dance about Prince Lanling of Northern Qi, a commander said to be so handsome that he wore a savage mask in battle to keep his troops focused. The dancer holds a baton in the right hand and works in quick, springing steps, the most animated style in the bugaku canon. Watching it performed by a village dancer rather than a court troupe, in the open air with the mountain behind the hall, is the heart of the day.

The dancing does not stand alone. It closes the shrine's annual festival, the Ōgohei Festival, named for an enormous wand of offering built from thick green bamboo. The bamboo is wrapped in red and white cloth, topped with a fan, and marked with a rising sun on one face and a mirror on the other, standing for sun and moon. Dozens of men carry and haul it up the approach to the shrine, jostling to flute and drum. A young man climbs to the top; when the flag there is lowered, the wand races forward and its base is dropped into a prepared hole and swung around nine times. Only then, in the dance hall, does the ennen begin. The whole sequence is said to preserve the memory of the ascetics' "womb training" undertaken to become a senior leader.

Around the Shrine

Warabioka Kuchi-no-miya is one of two foot shrines, or kuchi-no-miya, of Chōkaisan Ōmonoimi Shrine, the other standing at Fukura nearer the coast. The main shrine sits on the summit of Mt. Chōkai, and the complex has long been honored as the first shrine of the old Dewa Province. The Warabioka precinct is a National Historic Site, and its main hall, kagura-den, and gate are Registered Tangible Cultural Properties, so the grounds reward a visit even outside festival season.

Mt. Chōkai itself, at 2,236 meters, rises on the border of Yamagata and Akita and is often called the Dewa Fuji for its shape. The mountain and the surrounding coast form the Chōkaisan-Tobishima Geopark, with spring-fed streams, summer alpine flowers, and seaside views toward the island of Tobishima. The city of Sakata, with its merchant-era warehouses and museums, lies a short drive south.