Namahage Museum and Shinzan Folklore Museum

What is there

The museum at the foot of Mount Shinzan shows the namahage of the whole peninsula side by side: more than a hundred masks, each from a different hamlet, carved from wood or shaped from bark, paper and bucket lids, with the straw coats, the wooden knives and the pails that go with them. A film follows the visit through one village on the night. Next door, the Shinzan Folklore Museum is a thatched farmhouse in which the visit is performed several times a day: the stamping at the door, the master of the house meeting the visitors with sake, the questioning about lazy children. The rite was inscribed by UNESCO in 2018 among the masked visiting deities of Japan.

Why here

On New Year’s Eve the young men of each hamlet put on the masks and go from house to house, and the households receive them with food and sake. The visitors are not oni but gods who come down from the mountain, and the differences between the masks are the differences between the hamlets. A legend told at the nearby shrine of Goshadō says five oni once demanded a girl a year and were tricked into leaving after laying 999 stone steps in a night; the steps are still there.

Yokai you will meet

• Namahage — The masks of every hamlet and a performance of the New Year's Eve visit.
• Oni 鬼 — The horned masks and the tale of the five oni who built the 999 steps nearby; in the rite itself the visitors are gods.

Getting there

Oga Station (JR Oga Line). Reservation-only Namahage Shuttle about 25 minutes; by car about 20 minutes.

• Open in Google Maps (external link)
• Open in OpenStreetMap (external link)
• Official site (external link)