Onbashira 2022
Kiotoshi — Coming down the mountain: By Emi Yamazaki (2016)
Every six years, the people of the Suwa Basin in Japan’s Nagano highlands hold their Onbashira Festival, an exuberant celebration of community and renewal. During it, they work together to haul enormous pillars fashioned from venerable fir trees deep in the mountains down to the local shrines. And they do this by hand. Onbashira’s first historical mention appears in the Middle Ages and points to origins in the Heian Period (circa 800 CE). Other evidence indicates its roots run back much further. An integral part of the folk Shinto faith of the region, the objects of the festival are the hashira, or onbashira, literally the honorable pillars. Once they arrive at the shrines, the parishioners stand them at the four corners of the precincts, in part a symbolic renewal of their ties to the natural world.
Onbashira is a festival of simmering energy, earthy pomp and pageantry. On their journey from the forests, the pillars encounter numerous obstacles along the way. This includes a treacherous section of the mountainside where devotees mount the hashira and ride them as they plunge into the valley. Throughout the festival, over and over people talk of kokoro-hitotsu—the one heart, the single spirit of striving together to bring the hashira down the mountain.
Satobiki — Heading to the shrine: By Emi Yamazaki (2016)
Onbashira’s cycle turns like the seasons, and the next is due to arrive in less than a month (end of March 2022). Japan has yet to emerge from the shadow of COVID-19, and the pandemic has had a profound effect on the festival. Many ceremonies, pre-fest gatherings, and preparatory events have been scaled back or cancelled all together.
At its heart, Onbashira is a Shinto rite. Those of authority at the shrines said as early as last fall that the pillars would be replaced according to schedule, regardless of the COVID-19 situation. But the people’s festival, the actual pulling of the hashira from the forests, is another matter in their eyes. As a community event with hundreds of people heaving on ropes in close proximity and shouting as the pillars move along, it’s hardly pandemic-friendly.
And so, the organizing committees announced recently that the first part of Onbashira, including the pillar riding, was officially cancelled. This has never happened in the festival’s history. Instead of the collective labor of the people, the pillars will be loaded onto trucks and carried to a half-way staging area. A small contingent of local parishioners be permitted to attend ceremonies around each pillar’s transport.
Everyone will have to wait and see whether the second part of the festival takes place as planned in early May.
The locals I speak with, while of course disappointed, are understanding. This is precisely the time for the often too lightly used Japanese phrase “shoganai”—it can’t be helped. And yet, I wonder. Like the Olympics, what if the festival was delayed a year? Being a Shinto event that happens on a historic, not to mention celestial schedule, this would be unheard of. The few people I mentioned the idea to clearly thought it was crazy talk.
With an aging population and young people by and large heading to the cities, passing the festival on to the next generation is already a major concern. Among the young people who remain, many already feel that this festival with its tough physical labor is hardly worth the effort. “If you have to replace the pillars, why not just truck them down?”
And so, the point of the festival becomes, quite literally, replacing the honorable pillars. And as COVID-19 is showing quite clearly this time, you don’t need the community to do that. Using the trucks is a simple solution, and the shrine will have its fresh pillars on schedule. What they won’t do is convene the one heart of the region. Replacing the pillars never existed apart from it. Without the labor of the people, it simply wouldn’t have been able to happen.
Across Japan, local traditions are fading as the meaning at their heart is lost in the current of modernity. A fixation on form, often at the expense of intrinsic meaning, in my opinion hastens this process along.
Come May, we can only hope that the virus has settled down enough so that the second part of the festival—hauling the pillars the rest of the way to the shrines and standing them around the periphery—takes place as planned.
* I had the honor of taking part in Onbashira, first in 2010, and then again in 2016. See my website ww.onbashirafestival.com for more on the celebration itself. My novel “The Pillar Festival” unfolds within the world of Onbashira. Read more about it here.
Tateonbashira — Standing of the pillar: By Emi Yamazaki (2016)