Namahage Sedo Festival

On New Year's Eve in the villages of the Oga Peninsula, men in straw capes and ogre masks go from house to house shouting for lazy children and idle newcomers. The custom is a national Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property and part of a group of visiting-deity rites on UNESCO's intangible heritage list. Few visitors are in Oga on New Year's Eve, so in 1964 the custom was joined to an older winter fire rite at Shinzan Shrine to make this festival, held in February. The evening begins with young men receiving their masks from the priest. A re-enactment of the New Year's Eve visit follows in the shrine's kagura hall. The moment people come for is when a conch horn sounds and the namahage come down the snowy slope above the shrine carrying torches. Rice cakes grilled over the sacred bonfire are offered to them and later shared out among the crowd. Shinzan Shrine is on the slopes of the peninsula and a long way from Akita city, and February here is snowy and cold.