Akita Folk Performing Arts Hall

A quick walk through Akita Folk Performing Arts Hall tells you less than a slow one — the details are where the history actually lives.

Akita has an unusual concentration of surviving folk performance — the Kanto pole-balancing of the city, the Tsuchizaki festival floats, the Namahage of Oga, bangaku dances from the mountains — and this hall keeps the objects and shows how they work. The kanto is the centrepiece: a bamboo pole hung with forty-six paper lanterns, weighing about fifty kilos, which performers balance on a palm, a forehead, a shoulder and a hip. There are demonstrations you can try.

It costs ¥100. Next door, included in the same visit, is the Kaneko house, a merchant residence from the late Edo period with its fireproof storehouse and the water jars kept on the roof against fire — one of the few pre-modern buildings left in central Akita. During the Kanto festival in early August the hall stays open until seven.