F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-085
Mishima no Kasedori
見島のカセドリみしまのかせどり
On the second Saturday evening of February each year, the farming settlement of Mishima in Saga City receives two remarkable visitors. Two unmarried young men of the community don straw capes (waraminо) and broad sedge hats and transform themselves into the Kasedori — a kami visitation figure designated as an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Japan. Moving house to house through the district, they strike split green bamboo with violent force against the tatami mats and floorboards of each home, driving out malevolent spirits and invoking blessings of domestic safety, abundant harvest, and good health. Each household receives the Kasedori within its walls, offering sake, rice cakes, and simmered dishes in prescribed hospitality. The ritual encodes a fundamental pattern of Japanese folk religion: the periodic arrival of a numinous, otherworldly figure who purifies communal space and renews the bond between the settlement and its spiritual guardians. Scholars of comparative folklore have noted a striking resemblance between the Kasedori and the Kase-dori of Tsuruoka in Yamagata Prefecture — a geographically distant but structurally parallel kami visitation practice — making Mishima's tradition an important node in the study of how vernacular religious practices dispersed across Japan.
H I G H L I G H T S
Highlights
- 01Two young men in straw capes and sedge hats move house to house at night, striking split bamboo against floors to expel malevolent spirits — a kami visitation rite designated as a National Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property, conducted in one of the few surviving house-to-house formats in Kyūshū.
- 02Each household formally receives and feasts the Kasedori within its walls; the ritual is simultaneously an act of purification and a reaffirmation of the community's internal bonds — observer access is strictly limited to positions designated by the community and organizers.
- 03Comparative folklorists have identified structural parallels between the Mishima Kasedori and the Kase-dori of Yamagata Prefecture, suggesting dispersal of a common vernacular religious form across geographically distant regions — making this a significant case in the study of Japan's kami visitation traditions.
D E E P D I V E