F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-036
Nibu Festival (Laughing Festival)
丹生祭（笑い祭）にうまつり わらいまつり
At the Nibu Tsuhime Shrine in the mountains of Wakayama Prefecture, a herald painted entirely white — face, neck, hands — in a garish costume of red, yellow, and blue, with the character for "laugh" written on one cheek and a torii gate drawn on the chin, processes through the village ringing a bell and shouting "E, tanoshi-ya! Yo wa raku-ja, Warae, warae, Wahhahhā!" — roughly: "Rejoice! Life is easy! Laugh, laugh, Hahaha!" — demanding that everyone he encounters respond in kind. The Nibu Matsuri (also called the "Warai Matsuri," the Laughing Festival) is a Wakayama Prefecture Intangible Cultural Property and one of Japan's most direct surviving examples of obligatory ritual laughter — laughter that is not a response to humor but a ceremonial act, the collective exorcism of sorrow and stagnation through the physical mechanism of the laughing body.
H I G H L I G H T S
Highlights
- 01A herald painted white with "laugh" written on his cheek demands that every person he encounters laugh out loud — obligatory ceremonial laughter as a folk purification technology
- 02The festival's mythology traces to a deity who arrived late to the divine assembly and was cheered up by her community's laughter: communal care encoded as annual ceremony
- 03Wakayama's mountainous isolation has preserved ceremonies like this in forms that more accessible areas have lost — this is living folk religion at the margin