F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-060
Okumakabuto Festival (Waku-bata Procession of the Twenty-Day Festival)
お熊甲祭おくまかぶとまつり
Each year on September 20th at the Kumakabuto Arakashihiko Shrine in Nanao City's Nakajima district on the Noto Peninsula — the shrine of the deity Tsunugaarasito-no-Mikoto — nineteen subsidiary-shrine mikoshi converge on the main shrine from across the surrounding community, accompanied by attendants bearing the festival's defining visual symbol: the waku-bata, a crimson banner mounted on a lacquered frame and encrusted with gold brocade fittings, standing approximately twenty metres in height. The waku-bata is carried by teams of young men from each subsidiary shrine, and the festival's dramatic climax is a manoeuvre known as the Shimada-kuzushi: in a single rapid movement, each waku-bata is tilted from vertical to nearly ground-level and then raised upright again, a gesture said to resemble the collapse and restoration of a traditional Shimada chignon hairstyle. Designated a National Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1981, and organised around the convergence of nineteen subsidiary shrines on a single main shrine, the Okumakabuto Festival is one of the largest federated shrine procession ceremonies in Japan. It takes place in the context of the Noto Peninsula's ongoing recovery from the earthquake of January 1, 2024; attendance, scale, and access conditions vary and should be confirmed before any planned visit.
H I G H L I G H T S
Highlights
- 01Twenty-metre-tall waku-bata — crimson banners on gold-fittings frames — carried in procession by teams of young men from each of the nineteen subsidiary shrines, creating a procession whose scale, chromatic intensity, and vertical drama have no precise equivalent elsewhere in the Japanese festival calendar.
- 02The Shimada-kuzushi manoeuvre — a sudden full tilt of the twenty-metre waku-bata to within centimetres of the ground, followed by immediate vertical restoration — is a feat of collective physical coordination requiring years of training and carrying genuine risk in strong winds; its visual impact is the experiential core of the festival.
- 03The federated structure of nineteen subsidiary shrines converging on the main shrine reflects the medieval and early-modern community organisation of the central Noto Peninsula, and the ceremony's 1981 designation as a National Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property recognises its documentary significance for the religious and social history of this coastal region.
D E E P D I V E