The story
Etchu Yatsuo Owara Kaze no Bon in Toyama
Owara Kaze no Bon is a September 1-3 dance festival in the Yatsuo district of Toyama City, tracing roughly to the Genroku era around 1700 as a ritual appeal to the wind god ahead of the rice harvest. Eleven distinct town subdivisions each maintain their own variations of the slow, lantern-lit dance, performed to melancholic shamisen and vocals of the Owara Bushi folk song.
The Owara Kaze no Bon festival, held each year across the first three days of September in the Yatsuo district south of Toyama City, traces its origins to around the Genroku era of the Edo period, roughly 1700, though the precise circumstances of its founding are not documented with certainty and local accounts vary in their details.