F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-081

Satsuma Iōjima no Mendon (Visitation Deity Ceremony, Sulfur Island)

薩摩硫黄島のメンドンさつまいおうじまのめんどん

On the volcanic island of Satsuma Iō-jima — one of the Mishima Village islands of Kagoshima Prefecture, approximately three to four hours by ferry south of Kagoshima Port, the site of the active volcano Satsuma Iō-dake and the legendary exile of the Heian poet-monk Shunkan — a visitation deity ceremony is conducted on the first and second days of the eighth lunar month, integrated within the island's annual Hassaku Taiko-odori, a devotional drum-and-dance performance traditionally offered to the island's tutelary deity at the Hassaku festival (the harvest first-fruits node of the lunar agricultural calendar). During the Hassaku Taiko-odori, a figure called the Mendon appears: a young man of the community wearing an enormous, brilliantly painted mask in vivid reds, blacks, whites, and greens, the full body wrapped in ceremonial costume, bearing a long staff made of pampas grass (the Suppengi). Without warning, the Mendon erupts into the drum-dance circle and strikes the heads of the dancers and assembled observers lightly with the Suppengi, driving away the year's calamities. The Satsuma Iōjima no Mendon is designated one of the ten constituent elements of the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage listing "Raiho-shin: Ritual Visits of Deities in Masks and Costumes" (2018). The integration of the visitation deity's arrival within an ongoing devotional performing arts event — the Hassaku Taiko-odori — is unique among the ten inscribed elements, making the Mendon ceremony a compound of offering-performance and numinous visitation within a single ceremonial occasion.