For Three Nights, the Town Becomes a Song
Owara Kaze no Bon in Etchu Yatsuo
From the first to the third of September each year, the sound of kokyu and shamisen moves through the hill town of Yatsuo in Toyama City. Owara Kaze no Bon is a three-night festival that runs deep into the dark.
Paper lanterns line the slope while the crowd waits
Three centuries
The festival is traced to 1702, when the town recovered a document it needed to govern itself and celebrated by dancing through the streets for three days and nights. It has kept those three days ever since.
Yatsuo clings to a slope above the Ida River. Stone-paved hills, lattice house fronts, and the lights of the valley below: the terrain decides how the dance is seen.
In the Edo period the town sat on the road between Hida and Toyama and grew wealthy trading silk cocoons and raw silk, with paper and medicine alongside. That wealth paid for a townspeople's culture, and Owara came out of it. It has never been a grand civic spectacle; it is something the town has gone on doing for itself, and that has not changed.
A machi-nagashi procession, singers and musicians at the head
Eleven neighbourhoods
Eleven neighbourhoods dance: Nishi-shinmachi, Higashi-shinmachi, Kami-shinmachi, Suwamachi, Kagamimachi, Higashimachi, Nishimachi, Imamachi, Shimo-shinmachi, Tenmanmachi and Fukushima. Each has its own pattern of happi coat and yukata, its own singing, its own timing. Each dances the length of its own streets behind its own musicians, a procession called machi-nagashi.
Costume patterns differ from one neighbourhood to the next
Dancers wear woven straw hats pulled low, and their faces are almost entirely hidden. The men's dance stays low and linear, as though gripping the ground. The women's dance, also called the dance of four seasons, carries the seasons in the turn of the wrists. A third form, the harvest dance, borrows the movements of field work and is open to onlookers who want to join.
The men's dance, low and deliberate
The music is shamisen, kokyu, drum and voice. The shamisen carries the melody and the kokyu, a bowed instrument, follows just behind it. That single instrument is what sets Owara apart from every other bon dance in the country. The singing is held back rather than projected, and it reaches you coming down the hill.
After dark
When the light goes, paper lanterns come on along the streets, each marked with the name of its neighbourhood, running evenly up the hill. The town stops resembling its daytime self.
Lanterns of Shimo-shinmachi
The crowd sits on the stone slope, waiting
The festival changes character through the night. Early evening brings overlapping processions and the largest crowds. As the hours pass the visitors thin out and the dancing continues more quietly, for the town's own sake. The stretches in between, walking a half-empty lane under the lanterns, are part of the event rather than a gap in it.
There is one piece of etiquette worth knowing. Almost no one applauds or calls out as a procession passes. It keeps the music unbroken, and no one had to make it a rule.
A lantern late in the night
Yatsuo on ordinary days
The town rewards a visit outside the three nights as well. Suwamachi Hondori, paved in stone and lined with white walls and lattice fronts, is on the national list of one hundred notable roads, and the sound of the Ennaka watercourse running beside it is on the list of one hundred soundscapes worth preserving. A climb to Jogayama Park gives a view over the whole town.
A studio still makes Yatsuo washi paper, where you can watch the sheets being formed and buy dyed paper to take away. On 3 May, the town pulls festival floats that gather carving from Inami, lacquer from Johana and metalwork from Takaoka. Walking Yatsuo makes the order of things clear: the town was prosperous first, and Owara grew out of that.
Before you go
The three nights draw very large crowds, and accommodation in Yatsuo itself is taken far in advance. Staying in central Toyama and travelling in by the JR Takayama Line, by shuttle bus or by car is the realistic approach. The streets are steep and paved in stone, so bring shoes you have already walked in. Early September in Toyama is hot by day and can turn cool after midnight.
Rain suspends the dancing rather than cancelling it: the instruments do not tolerate damp, and each neighbourhood decides when to resume. Knowing that it is a pause, not an ending, changes how the wait feels.
Visiting
Owara Kaze no Bon, Yatsuo, Toyama City, Toyama Prefecture
1-3 September, every year
17:00 to 23:00 on 1 and 2 September; 19:00 to 23:00 on 3 September.
Etchu-Yatsuo Station is 25 to 30 minutes from Toyama Station on the JR Takayama Line, and about 30 minutes on foot from the station to the old town. Traffic restrictions and special timetables apply during the festival.