Chikuni Suwa Shrine Annual Festival (Sasarasuri)

About this event

A festival held annually over two days in mid-September at Chikuni Suwa Shrine in Otari Village, Nagano Prefecture, this is an unusual masked performing arts festival also called "Sasarasuri." "Sasara masters," comically disguised with faces hidden behind Hyottoko or Okame masks, sloppily worn undergarments (juban), and mismatched footwear, chase after children and women while rubbing together bamboo tools and phallic-shaped wooden sticks (sasara) to make noise. Women touched by this are said to be blessed with children, representing a folk ritual behavior involving sexual symbolism praying for fertility and descendants' prosperity. Urayasu-no-mai dances by young girls are dedicated at the main shrine building, and lion dances (shishimai) at the kagura hall, while the eve festival (yoimiya) possesses a solemn and magical atmosphere. Valuable as a masked performing art handed down in mountain villages along the Chikuni Highway (Salt Road), it is characterized by a structure combining playful antics with prayers for bountiful harvests. Key highlights include the comical yet bold actions of the "sasara masters" in Hyottoko/Okame masks and untidy juban chasing women; the folk customs with sexual symbolism praying for fertility and family prosperity by rubbing phallus-shaped "sasara" to generate sound; the contrast with dedicated performing arts like girls' Urayasu-no-mai at the shrine sanctuary and lion dances at the kagura hall; and the rarity of masked performing arts surviving in mountain villages along the Chikuni Highway (Salt Road).

Venue

Chikuni Suwa Shrine

3435 Chikuni, Otari-mura, Kitaazumi-gun, Nagano 399-9422