MR Seiichi NAKAJIMA

• Lecturer, Seian University of Art and Design / Former Director, Nagahama City Hikiyama Museum, Japan

• Session 3: Presenter 4

From a Local Festival to the Hikiyama Festival in Nagahama―The Road towards a World Festival

The Nagahama Hikiyama Festival is a festive event which features ‘hikiyama’ (festival float), a tradition which has been passed down to Nagayama City (located in the north of Shiga Prefecture) from the Edo period. Every year, a series of events are held before and after ‘honbi’ (main festival), which falls on 15 April. Among others, ‘children’s kabuki’ (or ‘children’s kyōgen’)―performed by boys between seven and fifteen years of age on the stages of twelve ‘hikiyamas’ (pulled-type parade floats)―is the festival’s highlight. (In the present day, four, rather than twelve, floats appear alternately). The Nagahama Hikiyama Festival is one of the thirty three float festivals in Japan which was registered on 1 December 2016 as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. This paper will describe how, after the end of the Asia-Pacific War, the Nagahama Festival, which was at once local and global, was transformed into the Nagahama Hikiyama Festival under the policy to promote cultural heritage, while discussing the current situation in which the festival faces the pressure of globalization as a result of its recognition as a UNESCO heritage. In the meanwhile, the paper will also discuss the significance of local museums and their curators that are expected to play an important role in the process of globalization. It is to be noted that, as the former director (curator) of the Nagahama City Hikiyama Museum, the presenter of this paper himself was once directly involved in the successful attempt to have the festival registered on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.

Seiichi Nakajima, born in Nagasaki in 1950, specializes in Japanese folklore studies. In 1977, he earned his Master’s degree from Graduate School of Literature, Bukkyo University (MA in Japanese History). In 2016, as the then Director of the Nagahama City Hikiyama Museum, he was directly involved in the successful effort to have the Nagahama Hikiyama Festival registered on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Currently, he teaches at Seian University of Art and Design and at Shiga Bunkyo Junior College. He has curated exhibitions on, published articles about, and given lectures on the ‘Okonai’ festivals practiced in Western Japan, including the Oumi area, as well as the folk arts and rituals observed in Shiga Prefecture. His many publications include a book entitled, Kawamichi no okonai: kohoku ni haru o yobu ippyo-kagamimochi [Okonai in Kawamichi: One-bag Mirror Rice Cake with which spring arrives in Kohoku] (Shiga-ken Hikone-shi: Sanraizu Shuppan, 2011) .