F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-204
Wakaba Festival (Unagouji Festival)
若葉祭（うなごうじ祭）わかばさい（うなごうじまつり）
The Wakaba Festival, held each spring at Ushikubo Hachimansha Shrine in Ushikubo, Toyokawa City, Aichi Prefecture, is popularly known as the "Unagouji Festival" and counted among Japan's most bizarre festivals. With roughly 500 years of tradition, it is a designated intangible folk cultural property of Aichi Prefecture. Its defining feature is the men known as "Yanyo-gami," who bring up the rear of the procession: whenever the distinctive chant of the sasa-odori sounds, they flop down and lie sprawled across the street. Because the sight resembles maggots (uji) writhing on the ground, the festival came to be called "Unagouji." A procession of floats, sasa-odori dancers and Yanyo-gami travels the roughly one kilometer between the shrine and the otabisho (resting site) at Tenno Shrine and back, the Yanyo-gami lying down here and there to delight the crowds. The coexistence of solemn ritual and this comical act of collapsing to the ground is found nowhere else.
H I G H L I G H T S
Highlights
- 01The 'Yanyo-gami' men flopping down en masse on the street to the chant — a strange custom rare even in Japan
- 02The very origin of the name: the prone bodies likened to writhing maggots (uji), hence 'Unagouji'
- 03A townscape procession of floats, sasa-odori and Yanyo-gami running the roughly 1 km between the shrine and Tenno Shrine
- 04The contrast of a ~500-year, prefecture-designated cultural property with its comical, absurd central act
D E E P D I V E