Paantu: distinct visiting-deity rites on Miyakojima

In Shimajiri, three young men wear masks and vines coated in mud from a local well, then visit the settlement. Smearing mud on people and houses is part of the rite’s purification and blessing. The figures visit homes with newborn children and newly built houses, among other places.

In Nobaru, one boy wears a mask, other boys provide music, and women wear plant adornments and carry branches. The procession passes through the settlement, stopping to pray and perform purification actions. It has different participants, clothing and movements from Shimajiri’s three mud-covered figures.

The cultural-property record places Shimajiri’s masked visitors at the third of its annual ritual occasions, in the ninth lunisolar month. Nobaru’s rite falls on the last Ox day of the twelfth lunisolar month. These dates follow local ritual calendars and do not correspond to fixed Gregorian dates.

Tradition and ritual change

Shimajiri tradition tells of wooden masks washing ashore at Kubama, but accounts differ over their number and date. It does not establish a founding year; damaged masks are also remade. Naoki Imabayashi’s study records a further change by around 2019: some preliminary rites led by female ritual specialists had ceased as succession failed, and a male specialist had taken over choosing the date. The continuing masked visits thus coexist with changes in the surrounding ritual system.

The two local rites were selected for documentation in 1982 and designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1993. In 2018 they became part of UNESCO’s collective inscription Raiho-shin, ritual visits of deities in masks and costumes. These dates mark safeguarding measures for existing rites, rather than their origins.

Participation and traffic

Participation requires practical work. In 2018 interviews with the Ryukyu Shimpo, Nobaru residents described seeking a child participant through people from the settlement living in neighbouring areas; in 2016 an adult had substituted when no child was available. Shimajiri residents reported that visitor and traffic management could leave them less time to join the rite organised by their youth association. These were concerns voiced at that time.