Field Survey on Star Festival Dancing at Osato of Ichikikushikino City

Tanabata-odori practice (uchinarashi) at Osato

 We performed a field survey of the Star Festival Dance (Tanabata-odori) inherited by Osato of Ichikikushikino City, Kagoshima Prefecture as part of the Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage’s Investigation and Research on the Conservation and Use of Intangible Folk Cultural Properties study project. The Tanabata-odori is performed in 14 localities in the Osato District, and consists of dancing with drums (Taiko-odori) played by representative dancers of each locality, large decorations created by all the localities, and various processions. In this field survey, we paid special attention to the practice of continuous dancing for one week, which is called Narashi. Narashi is mainly carried out by youth groups of each locality, assisted by all the people in the district. Through this cooperation, we can clearly see the way social relationships have been maintained and restructured. On the other hand, we also need to consider that handing down traditions can be difficult, causing a large problem from the viewpoint of conserving cultural heritage.

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