The Yonabaru Tug-of-War festival (Yonabaru Otsunahiki) is one of the three great Tug-of-War festivals in Okinawa, with the biggest one being in Naha (there’s a post on here already about that one). While a beautiful early fall day, it was still pretty hot!
Dating back over 450 years, it’s basically the local Okinawan version of the Sumo tournament in mainland. Originally, it was born as a festival to celebrate the harvest period and to ward off droughts, disease, and other things that might get in the way of a good harvest. Here we’re watching the celebrants line up and get ready to mate the two halves of the rope and carry it to the parade field.
Alongside the people getting ready to carry the rope, they also have actors dressed up as the first Ryukyu kings that would welcome rulers from other regions to the islands and welcome them for the purposes of trade and information exchange. They generally have a mock procession on the rope once it’s in place. Here you can see I captured one of the actors through the eye of the rope – pretty cool!
Some other shots I captured while they get ready for the race. You can see them cooling off the spectators as it was – quite hot! The guy with his finger up in the air is one of the guys that is setting the pace for the tug of war part. It’ll be a mess if he can’t get everyone on the same page! I’m not sure what this guy with the flag in the white outfit is doing but he looked pretty cool.
Finally getting the rope to the parade field. There’s a huge number of people that are required to carry it. Our nephew was visiting at the time and he got in on the action – including a custom headband and t-shirt. You can see they put the rope on sticks and then carry it on their backs – not exactly the easiest way to get it done, but you know the saying – many hands makes light work!
You can see here the rope has made it to the field, and now everyone is gathered around for the ceremony and ready for some action! The way they do the competition is a best of 3 series, so the second match is usually more intense than the first. I think the costumes here are specific to the region. I don’t know the background but they are were handed out by a central committee that is doing the organizing, and generally there’s a couple kids mixed in that are learning how to do things from their parents or other relatives.
After the competition people were able to cut off sections of the rope and take home as souvenirs and good luck charms. And they did have the cooling fans out again! You can see the shot of the street as we were walking back, it was a beautiful day all around and glad we got to enjoy the festival.