Yesterday, Jessi and I visited the Namahage Museum in Northern Akita.
Namahage are forest spirits of old legend. Once a year they come stomping across the snow, making a ruckus and letting lose wild cries of anger. They are most often either red or blue and look something like this.
Well not quite, those are our classmates trying on the costume.
However, Namahage come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
The Namahage come once a year to every person's house to check to see if the children have been good. If the children have been bad, the Namahage take them away and eat them. As sort of an agreement to help appease the Namahage, the parents set out a meal of hospitality to the Namahage. If the Namahage find that you are inhospitable, they eat your children.
The Tradition
The Tradition of Namahage is that a member of a family, or more recently a local community of Namahage for hire, will stomp around the house once a year. Enter into the home, scare the jeepers out of the children. Do a Namahage stomp dance. Eat the food offered by the family. Scare the children some more and then stomp off into the wilderness.
We watch some video of this, which included a shot of a seven year old holding onto a post with three Namahage trying to pull him away by his legs. sometimes children would hide, and the namahage would go and find them. But after the video we were guided towards a small guest house in the woods. Where we sat and waited for a Namahage to appear.
Well after a while we did see some real Namahage.
They were pretty fierce, and they managed to find Jessi out of the crowd and get up real close to her. At which point she did her best to curl up in the fetal position inside of her camera.
Afterward they explained that they were just following the rules, and that if any children disobeyed the rules, they'd be back next year to eat them
Scary Sure, but they aren't always terrifying.
Hello Namahage
Stitchmahage
Overall it was a great trip, and I can't wait for the snow to fall and to hear the howls of the Namahage in the forest.
-Mack
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