F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-205

Chikuni Suwa Shrine Festival: Sasara-suri

千国諏訪神社例祭 ささらすりちくにすわじんじゃれいさい ささらすり

The Chikuni Suwa Shrine Festival, held over two days in mid-September each year at Chikuni Suwa Shrine in Otari Village, Nagano Prefecture, is a masked-performance oddity also known as "sasara-suri." The "sasara-shi" — performers hiding their faces behind hyottoko and okame masks, dressed in sloppily worn undergarments and mismatched footwear — chase children and women while rasping a bamboo implement and a phallus-shaped stick (the sasara) to make sound. A woman touched in this way is said to be blessed with children, an act of folk belief carrying sexual symbolism in prayer for fertility and prosperity of descendants. In the shrine hall, young girls perform the Urayasu dance, and in the kagura hall a lion dance is offered; the eve (yoimiya) has a solemn, ethereal atmosphere. As a masked performance surviving in a mountain hamlet along the Chikuni Kaido (the Salt Road), it is precious, distinctive for fusing comical antics with fertility prayer.