🏮 Muko Nage Suminuri Matsuri

むこ投げ・すみぬりまつり

Matsunoyama, Niigata (Matsunoyama Onsen and Yakushido Hall) · Every year on 15 January

Snow festival

123 days to go
Rooms around Matsunoyama, Niigata fill up while the festival is on.

At Yakushi-do in Matsunoyama Onsen, Tokamachi City, Niigata Prefecture, the Mukonage and Suminuri Festival is held every year on January 15 during the Little New Year. It features mukonage, in which a first son-in-law married in the previous year is thrown from the roughly 5-meter-high shrine grounds down a snowy slope, and suminuri, in which participants mix snow with the ashes of the Sainokami (dondo-yaki) bonfire and smear it on one another's faces. It is a traditional event unique to snow country. Mukonage is said to be a remnant of marriage by capture, or to have originated as a transformed grudge against those who took the village daughters in marriage, but today it is passed down as a blessing on the marriage that strengthens the bond between husband and wife. Suminuri is a Shinto ritual in which people call out "Congratulations" to each other as they smear the ash on each other's faces, praying for freedom from illness and prosperity in the family business. These events held in the snow of Matsunoyama Onsen remain deeply rooted in local life as a Little New Year custom.

Getting there

By car: about 40 minutes from the Shiozawa-Ishiuchi IC on the Kanetsu Expressway. By train: get off at Matsudai Station on the Hokuhoku Line, then about 20 minutes by taxi or about 25 minutes by route bus. Parking available (number of spaces limited).