page_title: Onbashira
section_title: Kamakura, Muromachi, and Sengoku periods
hierarchical_section_title: Onbashira / History of the festival / Kamakura, Muromachi, and Sengoku periods
caption_attribution_description: English: The western 'treasure hall' or hōden (宝殿) located in the Kamisha Honmiya of Suwa-taisha. 日本語: 諏訪大社 本宮 西宝殿
context_page_description: The Mihashira or Onbashira are four wooden posts or pillars that stand on the four corners of local shrines in the Lake Suwa area of Nagano Prefecture, Japan. The largest and most famous set of onbashira are those that stand on the four shrines that make up the Suwa Grand Shrine complex.
  By custom, the onbashira are replaced every six years, in the years of the Monkey and the Tiger in the Chinese zodiac. In Suwa Shrine, this occurs during the Onbashira Festival, which also functions as a symbolic renewal of the shrine's buildings. During the festival, sixteen specially-chosen fir trees are felled and then transported down a mountain, where they are then erected at the four corners of each shrine. Festival participants ride the onbashira as they are slid down the mountain, dragged to the shrine, and raised, and the festival has the reputation of being the most dangerous in Japan due to the number of people regularly injured or killed while riding the logs. This festival, which lasts several months, consists of two main segments, Yamadashi and Satobiki. Yamadashi traditionally takes place in April, and Satobiki takes place in May.
context_section_description: According to the Suwa Daimyōjin Ekotoba, the periodic rebuilding (造営 zōei) of structures (every six years) in the Upper and Lower Shrines such as the 'treasure halls' or hōden (宝殿) where the shrines' mikoshi are kept was decreed to be a 'perpetual duty' (永代の課役 eidai no kayaku) of the whole province of Shinano, with the inhabitants of the various districts of the province responsible for organizing the event. Such was indeed the case until the shrines experienced a period of decline during the Sengoku period.
  The Ekotoba describes the preparations for the rebuilding thus: at the onset of spring, the governor (kokushi) of Shinano would appoint officials who collected the necessary funds from the populace from checkpoints or toll booths (関 seki) set up in provincial roads in exchange for mifu (御符), official certifications stamped with the sacred seals of the Upper and Lower Shrines. The rebuilding of the shrines was undertaken by artisans assembled from all across the province, while thousands of people were assigned the task of erecting the onbashira into place, one or two thousand for each pillar.
  Due to the exorbitant amount of money required for the project, locals traditionally avoided or postponed special occasions like marriages, coming-of-age ceremonies, or even funerals during the year. In addition, observance of the event in the proper time was considered essential: failure to obey these taboos was thought to incur divine punishment.
  The upheavals of the Sengoku period threatened Suwa Shrine and its religious rites. Indeed, the shrine's ceremonies would have been lost to oblivion had not the warlord Takeda Shingen, a staunch devotee of the Suwa deity, took steps to revive their performance. In 1565, after he had fully conquered the whole of Shinano Province, Shingen issued an order for the reinstitution of the religious rites of both the Kamisha and the Shimosha, the zōei being one of them.
  In 1582 (Tenshō 10), the eldest son of Oda Nobunaga, Nobutada, led an army into Takeda-controlled Shinano and burned the Upper Shrine of Suwa to the ground. The shrine, which was destroyed in the invasion, was subsequently rebuilt on schedule two years later, in 1584 (Tenshō 12, year of the Yang Wood Monkey).
caption: The western hōden or 'treasure hall' (西宝殿) located in the Kamisha Honmiya. Both it and the eastern hōden (東宝殿) beside it are traditionally rebuilt in turns every six years: during an onbashira year the mikoshi inside either one of these two hōden is transferred to the other structure, where it will stay for six years; the emptied hōden is then torn down, rebuilt, and remains unoccupied for as long as the mikoshi is in the other building. In all, a given hōden stands for twelve years before it is reconstructed.
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