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Akan-Mashū NP, Hokkaido
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In Akan’s crane dance, a parent crane teaches its chick to flap before they fly off together. The dance is named for the red-crowned crane, called sarorun kamuy, “marsh deity,” in Ainu.
Akan’s repertoire includes dances for gathering wild plants, weaving and driving horses—not just ritual sword and bow dances. Their titles preserve lively scenes of everyday work alongside ceremony.
A traditional Ainu dance style forms a large circle, and sometimes onlookers sing along without instruments. The voices are part of the music—not just a response to the performance.
At Akan, the traditional dance is staged around an inau. The local Ainu organization describes this ritual offering as a kamuy in its own right—and as a gift for the kamuy’s world.
Akan’s Ainu dance-preservation society formed in 1968 and created a yukar play, which it performed at a Paris Japanese-culture festival in 1976. Later, it took Ainu dance to Taiwan, Brazil and New Zealand.
Akan’s dance was selected in 1975 for official documentation. The wider Ainu dance tradition became a national Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1984 and entered UNESCO’s Representative List in 2009.
Akan’s official cultural record notes an Iyomante, or bear-spirit sending ceremony, in 1975. UNESCO describes dance as central to this rite, with performers echoing a living bear as the kamuy is sent home.
