Nagasaki Traditional Performing Arts Museum

In detail

Nagasaki Traditional Performing Arts Museum

The Nagasaki Traditional Performing Arts Museum was built in 2004 as a place to display floats and items used during the Nagasaki Kunchi Festival. The museum also contains an exhibit with videos of the festival and a small gift shop.

Nagasaki Kunchi Festival

The Nagasaki Kunchi Festival is held each year from October 7 to October 9. During the festival, representatives from each of several participating Nagasaki neighborhoods tour the city with large, boat-shaped floats, stopping at various locations for performances of votive dancing. The festival is said to have been started in 1634 when two local women made an offering to Suwa Jinja Shrine in the form of a comedic Noh performance. Since then, the festival has come to incorporate several cultural traditions. The Dragon Dance originated in the Chinese community of Nagasaki, and the oranda-manzai, a stylized comic dance, began as a caricature of the Dutch residents of Dejima. Originally, 77 different neighborhoods in Nagasaki participated in the festival in rotating groups of 11, forming a seven-year cycle. The number of participating neighborhoods has shrunk since the nineteenth century, but the seven-year cycle continues to this day.