Prologue ![]()
My name is Masashi Kosuge, the representative of Toujin House, a small museum of Toujin Dance.
Toujin Dance was initiated as a main attraction of Tsu Festival, which started as a religeous ceremony for Tsu Hachiman Shrine about 360 years ago, and has been maintained in Wakabe-cho district of Tsu city. Our museum exhibits various kinds of materials of the dance including masks, clothes, tools, precious pictures, and big dragon flag, which was actually used 200 years ago, and other intresting collections in Wakabe-cho.
And you can enjoy to wear the clothes, play the instruments like trumpet, drums, gongs etc.by yourselves. You can of course take the photos.
Please come to our house, enjoy, and have an experience of the "Toujin Dance"!
The meaning of "Toujin"? Precise explanation is available here.
It is said that Toujin dance has its origin in imitating old Korean delegation, which was sent to Japan as a cultural and diplomatic envoy of the Chosun Dynasty during the Edo Period at the time of the change of the Tokugawa Shogun.
Especially, Year 2002 is said to be the Year of Japan-Korea National Exchange, because it's historic year of co-hosted World Cup between two countries.
During the year, the Japan-Korea People's Exchange Festival 2002 was held. That was a unique program recreating the Korean delegation to Japan. This program consisted of regional exchange events held between September and November in different cities in the ROK and every local city in Japan which has a connection to the Korean delegation to Japan, culminating in the main exchange event held at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba in November. Various human exchange programs, where parades of people made up mainly of Korean youths dressed in costumes of the Korean delegation to Japan, were promoted.
As one of the Korean delegation related heritages, we would like to promote PR of Toujin Dance broadly. And we believe it will contribute to establish more and deeper friendship between Japan and Korea, and other countries.Website Administrator
Michio Higashi