F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-075
Betchā Festival (Three-Demon Plague-Expulsion Procession, Onomichi)
ベッチャー祭べっちゃーまつり
On the slopes and lanes of old Onomichi — the port city of Hiroshima Prefecture made famous by its stepped alleys, temple-filled hillsides, and the literary associations of writers from Fumiko Hayashi to filmmaker Nobuhiko Ōbayashi — a festival rooted in a specific historical catastrophe has been conducted each autumn since the early nineteenth century. According to the Nihon Isan Onomichi preservation authority and the Onomichi City Tourism Association, the Betchā Festival is said to have originated around 1807, when a devastating epidemic swept through Onomichi and the community prayed for plague-expulsion and neighborhood safety at three shrines: Kibitsu Hikō Shrine, Yasaka Shrine, and Itsukushima Shrine. Three demon-deities — Betchā, known as Beta (a red-horned demon), Soba (a blue, hornless demon), and Shōkī (Zhong Kui, the Tang Chinese deity of plague-expulsion absorbed into Japanese folk religion) — and their assistants bearing sasara (bundles of split bamboo) process through the old city's lanes and slopes. Children encountered in the procession are struck or touched with the sasara or the ceremonial staff: local tradition holds that a child struck by the demon-deities will enjoy good health and mental acuity for the year. The festival is designated an Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Onomichi City and constitutes one of the Nihon Isan (Japan Heritage) elements of the port city of Onomichi.
H I G H L I G H T S
Highlights
- 01The three demon-deities — Betchā (red demon), Soba (blue demon), and Shōkī (plague-expulsion deity of Chinese-Daoist origin) — process through Onomichi's stepped alleys, slopes, and shopping streets in a route that uses the city's distinctive port-town topography as the ceremonial stage, making the Betchā Festival inseparable from the urban landscape of old Onomichi.
- 02Children struck by the demons' sasara (split-bamboo bundles) and ceremonial staffs are said to gain good health and mental acuity for the coming year — a form of apotropaic bodily contact that preserves one of the most direct and physically immediate expressions of plague-expulsion belief in contemporary Japanese festival practice.
- 03The inclusion of Shōkī — a deity of Tang Chinese-Daoist origin absorbed into Japanese folk practice as a plague-expulsion figure — alongside the native demon pair of Betchā and Soba demonstrates the syncretic religious layering characteristic of port-city religious culture, where maritime trade routes carried devotional traditions alongside commercial goods.
D E E P D I V E