Funagawa-aza-izumidai 66-1, Oga City, Akita, 010-0595, JAPAN. Tel: 0185-24-9103

Oga noGohei

Shinzan district (in 2011)
Cleaver

Masks
Masks

On New Year’s Eve, men from each village dressed as Namahage
visit homes in the district while shouting out whether there are
any crying babies or misbehaving children, or whether the young
wife of the household is an early riser.
For the people of Oga, the Namahage are deities who visit at theend of the year to admonish laziness, and bear tidings of good
health, good harvests, and products from the mountains andoceans. At the homes they visit, the Namahage deities arereceived courteously and served food and sake in accordancewith traditional custom.
Historically, the Namahage event of Oga City took place during
Ko-shogatsu (Little New Year, around January 15th), but is now
held on New Year’s Eve in some 50 villages.
In 1978, Oga no Namahage was designated as a national
important intangible folk cultural property.

KedeAkagami Shrine Goshado (national important cultural property)

Legend of Emperor Wu of HanHabaki

Folklore of 999 stone steps

Straw shoesThe garments
Namahage consecration ritual in Shinzan district (in 2011)

Namahage Etymology

During the cold winter if one warms one’s feet and handsby an open fire for too long, heat blisters will form. The
dialect in this region refers to these blisters as “namomi”,
and it is believed that namomihagi (peelings of blisters)
became Namahage.
Namomihagi also signifies blessings with which to greet
the New Year, focusing on children and new family
members such as new brides.

Cleaver andGohei (stick with pleated paper streamers)
The Namahage make their rounds of the districts bearing cleavers to peel off
the namomi, and in some districts with sticks adorned with pleated paper
streamers (gohei) to symbolize gods.
Masks
The masks are made from a variety of materials such as tree bark, wood carvings, paper stuck to a woven bamboo basket, and paper clay. Recently, manymasks made of plastic or carved by a local wood sculptor are also used.
KedeStraw raincoat garments. With the mask, it is an impressive costume depicting a god. It is also called ‘kedashi’, ‘kende’, and ‘keramino’.
HabakiShin guards woven from straw. These signify that the wearer has come fromelsewhere.

The Namahage
legendLegends regarding theorigins of Namahage are
handed dow n th roughgenerations as they wereassociated with “Emperor
Wu of Ha n” , “Shugenja(holy men)”, “the mountaing o d ” o r “d r i f t e r s f r o moutside Japan”.

Straw shoes
Shoes made of straw to enable one to travel from afar in the snow

* There are separate arrangements
to present the New Year Eve’sNamahage event to tourists.
Namahage Sedo Festival (in 2011)

Wakimoto Okura district (1950s), Yoshio Kuranuki private collection

Namahage of the Niiyama district (year of photograph unknown)

Stone steps leading up to Goshado

Drawing of a peach being offered toEmperor Wu of Han, Akagami Shrine collection

During the Han Dynasty in China, Emperor Wu, in his
search for the medicinal plant of eternal youth and immortality, came to Oga accompanied by five bats.
These bats transformed into ogres who worked forEmperor Wu. One day, they asked the Emperor if they
could rest for just one day, and were allowed to rest on
the fifteenth day of the New Year. They went into avillage where they rampaged and stole crops, livestockand the young maidens of the village.
The troubled villagers pleaded with Emperor Wu, offering him a young maiden each year if he would makethe ogres build a f light of one thousand stone steps
from the shore up to the summit of the mountain where
the Goshado was situated, in a single night before thefirst rooster crowed. If they failed to do this, the ogres
must never descend upon the village again.
The villagers believed that it was impossible to build
the steps in a single night, but the ogres worked hard to
lay the stones. But then, just as an ogre laid the 999thstep, the villagers made Amanojaku (a mountain specter) mimic the first crowing of a rooster.
The ogres were taken by surprise and became angry,
pulling out a thousand-year old cedar tree from its
roots and thrusting it upside-down into the earth again
before returning up the mountain. They never descended upon the village again.
From an old tale in Oga

It is said that the five ogres from the legend ofEmperor Wu of Han were worshipped at the Goshado, from which the Namahage originates.

Legend of the Shugenja (holy man)
Honzan and Shinzan in Oga have long been regarded as sacred grounds for Shugendo (mountainasceticism). Occasionally, the Shugenja came to thevillage dressed as mountain priests to pray in thehomes; it is thought that the frightening appearanceof the Shugenja took on the form of Namahage.

Legend of the mountain god

Looking up at Oga from out at sea, it appears tobe a mountain rising above the Sea of Japan. It
became revered as the place where the mountaingod who protected the villagers was enshrined,
and Namahage were the incarnations of that god.

Legend of drifters comingfrom outside JapanFor the villagers of Oga, people who drifted onto
the coast from outside Japan appeared to be ogres
in their appearance and speech. One theory is that
the Namahage are these foreigners who driftedashore.

◆ Cases where Namahage visits are forbidden◆ Kede effectNamahage do not enter homes where there has been either a death or a birth, nor do they enter homes with aninvalid person. Instead, they stamp up and down at theentrance of such homes.

The bits of straw that fall off from the kede when the Namahage run
amok in the home must be left undisturbed until the following morning. It is believed that the straw should be wrapped around the heador affected area to pray for recovery from an illness or for good health.

Archives“Oga no samukaze (Cold Wind in Oga)”
Akita Prefectural Museum collection

The oldest documentation regarding Namahage dates back to
the Edo Period in “Oga no samukaze (Cold Wind in Oga)” bytravel writer Masumi Sugae (1754–1829). It gives a picture anda detailed description of his visit to Oga on the fifteenth day ofthe New Year in 1881 in which the Namahage of Miyazawa arereferred to as Namomihagi.
Namahage has also attracted much folklore research such asby Kunio Yanagida (1875–1962) in “The Visitors of Little NewYear”, Shinobu Origuchi (1887–1953) in “Marebito”, and Taro
Okamoto (1911–1996) in “Rediscovery of Japan – Artistic
Geographic and Cultural Records”.
A folklore researcher in Oga, Saburo Yoshida (1905–1979) in“Notes on farmers at the foot of Kanpuzan in Oga” publishedin 1935 gives a detailed description of the local Namahage in
the area of Okura, Wakimoto village. Following this, heconducted a survey on Namahage in the entire district ofMinami Akita. Yoshida’s writings are regarded as pioneeringin the field of research on Namahage.