Iwaki-san Oyama-sankei Legend

The Iwaki-san Oyama-sankei tradition is a mountain-faith legend centered on Mount Iwaki (1,625 m) in Tsugaru, in which villagers climb in groups on the first day of the eighth month of the old calendar (sakujitsu Yamakake) to the inner shrine of Iwakiyama at the summit (the Okura-ishi). In Tsugaru, Mount Iwaki has been worshiped from old as the mountain to which ancestral spirits return and as a guardian of the harvest, and the ascent to the inner shrine became an annual practice. Centered on the young men of the village, in white pilgrim clothes, with banners and climbing music and the call "Saigi, Saigi," the procession aims for the summit. Together with Tsukiyama (Dewa Sanzan) and the Aso ritual rice-planting, it is one of the great east-Japan mountain rites, recognized by the Japanese government as Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property. The Tsugaru Itto-shi (1731), Toyu Zakki, and Sugae Masumi's travel diaries Sumika no Yama and Tsuikaranotsudo preserve historical records; Iwakiyama Shrine tradition, Agency for Cultural Affairs documents, and city and prefectural cultural-property materials of Hirosaki and Aomori are the basic references.