Bonden

Bonden Matsuri is a traditional festival held around the Little New Year in various places throughout Akita Prefecture. Dedicating colorful sacred wands called "bonden" at shrines and praying for that year's abundant harvest, good health, and household safety, it is known as a spirited festival representative of Akita's winter.

A bonden is a gigantic sacred wand made by attaching a large cylindrical ornament to the tip of bamboo or wood and decorating it gorgeously with colorful cloth and paper. Bearers in matching happi coats or hanten, hoisting bonden weighing tens of kilograms, head for the shrine to the rousing chant of "joyasa, joyasa." The Bonden Festival at Taiheizan Miyoshi Shrine in Akita City is especially famous: the "Bonden Dedication Festival," in which bonden dedicated by various neighborhoods and groups compete to be the first to reach the shrine building, overwhelms spectators with its fervent scene of jostling forward.

In Akita's deep-snow winter, the Bonden Matsuri, unfolding amid a silver-white world, is filled with the heat of men dispelling the harsh cold and the prayers of people wishing for happiness in the new year. The sight of richly adorned bonden standing out against the snowy sky conveys to this day the splendor and power unique to a Little New Year event of the Tōhoku region—a precious festival culture of Akita.