エイサー
Eisa is an Okinawan performing tradition closely connected with Bon observances. Local youth associations dance through their communities with song, sanshin, drums or hand dancing. Festival stages and creative troupes have added other settings. Its instruments, community organization and changing performance occasions help explain why Eisa has several local forms.
Community Bon rounds provide a central setting for Eisa.
Odaiko, shime-daiko and paranku have different structures and handling.
Stage appearances and competitions predate the Koza event founded in 1956.
The festival organizer describes jikata or jūtei as singers who play sanshin while singing folk songs and Eisa repertory. They guide the dancers’ tempo. The relationship between voice, string instrument and movement is therefore part of the ensemble, alongside its drums.
The large odaiko is held against the body. Gifu Women’s University describes a body built from joined thin boards; the festival organizer emphasizes the player’s work in following the sanshin and helping lead the drum rhythm. Carrying the heavy instrument also shapes how the performer can move.
A shime-daiko has a drumhead on each side of its body, tightened with rope. The university archive describes it as held in one hand while the performer moves the body, arms and legs.
A paranku has skin on one side. The university archive identifies it as the smallest and lightest of these three drum types. Its single head and simpler body distinguish it from the rope-tensioned, double-headed shime-daiko.
The university archive explains Eisa through welcoming and sending off ancestral spirits at Bon. The festival organizer describes local youth associations dancing through streets and visiting households on Old Bon nights, observed according to the lunar calendar. Michi-june names this moving neighborhood round.
In the organizer’s account, the aza, or local community, is an important unit of life and observance. Youth associations have their own forms and flags, and household donations during Bon rounds help fund their activities. A festival street procession has its own route and occasion rather than automatically reproducing one neighborhood’s Bon round.
Drum-centered forms using odaiko and shime-daiko are especially associated with central Okinawa. Former Yonashiro and Katsuren areas commonly use paranku, while some northern communities maintain hand-dance forms without drums. This range belongs within Eisa itself.
The organizer’s Okinawa City formation includes male and female hand dancers. Arm and hand gestures take part in the performance, and some youth associations incorporate karate forms. This is a regional description, with room for different local lineups.
In the same account, the flag bearer leads the formation and displays the youth association’s identity. The sanaja, sometimes called chondara, entertains as a comic figure while also organizing the line. During Bon rounds this performer may guide the route and coordinate with the surroundings.
The Cabinet Office account identifies unresolved questions about the name Eisa. Buddhist nenbutsu song and dance, visits to households and observances for spirits offer historical connections. The university archive presents Taichu’s transmission of nenbutsu dancing as a traditional account, rather than proof that one person invented present-day Eisa in a single year.
Mina Endo’s study of prewar newspapers describes the village piece Chunjun-nagari becoming a Yoisa dance on the Okinawan theater stage in 1912. This places exchanges with staged entertainment well before the postwar Koza competition.
Endo discusses a 1952 US–Ryukyu friendship Bon dance event in Ishikawa, with a Bon dance contest and an Eisa performance section. The Koza contest that developed into today’s All-Island Eisa Festival began in 1956. The latter is a starting date for that event, not for every Eisa competition.
The organizer explains that judging different regional aesthetics caused dissatisfaction. From its 22nd edition in 1977, the event abandoned competitive ranking and used the All-Island Eisa Festival name. This changed how the event presented local groups to one another and to spectators.
Creative Eisa groups developed from the 1980s, using elements such as pop music and newly designed costumes. The Cabinet Office describes wider appearances at tourist events, schools and other occasions. These settings coexist with community youth associations and their Bon observances.
Youth associations welcome and send off ancestral spirits through dancing rounds of their neighborhoods.
Paranku have one skin head. Shime-daiko have two heads tightened with rope.
They sing while playing sanshin and help guide the dancers’ tempo.
Endo records an Eisa section in a 1952 Ishikawa event. The 1956 date begins the separate Koza event history.
Competitive ranking ended, and the event continued as a festival.