This festival is held by Munakata Jinja Shrine in the Nishizu district of Obama, north of the old castle town area. Rather than occurring every year, as most festivals do, the Shichinen Festival is held on May 4th and 5th of the Year of the Snake and the Year of the Boar. These same dates are also used in the Year of the Ox for a special ceremony where the shrine deity is transferred from one hall to another.
Festivities center around the procession of a mikoshi (a portable shrine that carries the shrine deity) and a sacred wooden ship model. Various performances are offered to the deities, including bofuri (choreographed bouts between men wielding wooden poles), tachifuri (ritual routines by blade-wielding dancers), odaiko drumming, sacred kagura dances, and biwa lute playing.
During the festival period, the entertainers begin by gathering at Munakata Shrine in the morning. After performing offerings at the shrine, they make a procession to the otabisho, a temporary enshrinement site for the deities. Participants parade through the town, performing at each neighborhood associated with the shrine before returning to the otabisho in the afternoon. As evening falls, a traditional folk dance using tachi blades is performed at the otabisho before the participants end the day by returning to Munakata Shrine.
The performances of the Nishizu Shichinen Festival contain influences from both urban and coastal communities. The odaiko drumming and kagura dances, characteristic of bustling castle town culture, may have been brought to Obama by a new domain lord in the seventeenth century. Meanwhile, model ship processions and tachi blade dances can be observed at festivals along the Sea of Japan, such as the Shichinen Festival in nearby Takahama and various shrine festivals in the Tango region of northern Kyoto Prefecture. This illustrates how trade and the movement of people contributed to Obama’s diverse cultural history.
