Niino Snow Festival

新野の雪祭り

An all-night festival at Izu Shrine in Niino, Anan, Nagano, from the night of 14 January until the next morning. Treating snow as a sign of a good harvest, it prays for the fields, and under a great torch masked gods perform one dance after another: dengaku, bugaku, kagura, sarugaku and rice-field rites. It is said to show the roots of Noh and Kyōgen. An Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property. 14 to 15 January every year.

14–15 January 2027

ExpectedWorked out from past dates. We update it once the organiser announces the dates.

72 days away

Every year, 14 January, for 2 days

Future dates: 14 January 2027 · 14 January 2028 · 14 January 2029

Origin

This is the festival of Izu Shrine, once called simply the sacred rite or the dengaku festival. One story says that in the Kamakura period Itō Kojirō of Izu, after long wandering, reached Niino and brought torchlit Noh with him; another, that in the Muromachi period the Seki family from Ise brought the rite of sending off the rice-field god. Either way, it has been kept for centuries by performers in a blend of Shinto and Buddhist tradition. The name Snow Festival comes from the folklorist Orikuchi Shinobu, who first came in 1926. Snow on the day is said to bring a good harvest, and if there is none in Niino people fetch it from the pass, for the festival is believed to be incomplete unless even a handful of snow is offered to the gods. It was designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1977.

What to look for

At about one in the morning on the 15th the great torch in the grounds is lit, and beneath it the masked gods dance until daybreak. The masks, finished simply with ink, chalk white and red ochre, number nineteen today and keep the style of the Kamakura period. First comes Saihō with a gentle face, in a red hood and a long straw crown, dancing with pine and a rice-field fan. Then come Modoki, who mimics Saihō; Kyōman, who handles a model horse as if it were real; Ushi, in which the chief priest shoots arrows at the roof and stone steps of the hall of worship; the humorous Okina and Kaidō-kudari; Kanba, played by a child; and three demon Tengu, until the rice-field rites close the festival in the morning. On the evening of the 14th the mikoshi goes up from Suwa Shrine to Izu Shrine in the O-nobori.

How to watch

The rites in the grounds begin when onlookers beat on the walls of the dressing hut with sticks of firewood, calling “ranjō, ranjō”, as if urging the gods to come out. The festival is carried out in a fixed order and in deadly earnest: in 1926, when Orikuchi Shinobu’s party asked for a dance to be repeated for a photograph, the villagers reportedly shot back that a Niino god never comes out twice.

If you go

The main festival runs from the night of 14 January to the morning of the 15th in the grounds of Izu Shrine. It is an all-night festival in the open, with temperatures well below freezing, so go well wrapped up. Timings shift with the dancers. Park at the Shinshū Niino Sengokudaira roadside station and walk to the shrine, about ten minutes up a mountain road of roughly a kilometre.

Where

Izu Shrine, Niino

Anan, Nagano

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Sources

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