Gujo Odori

Gujo Odori (郡上おどり) is a bon dance held in the castle town of Gujo Hachiman, in Gifu, over more than thirty nights from mid-July to early September. It is described as the longest-running bon dance in Japan. There is one venue each night, tied to neighbourhood festivals, so the dance does not stay in one place for the season but moves through the town.

It is not a performance. It is described explicitly as not a dance to watch but a dance to dance, and the circle is open. The music is shamisen, drum and flute with singing, and by tradition the dance called Matsusaka (松阪) always closes the night.

The dancing has continued in the town for some four hundred years, and was encouraged by an Edo-period lord as a way of bringing the social classes together. One of its dances, Kochō Kawasaki (古調かわさき), is designated an Important Intangible Cultural Property nationally, and Gujo Odori was registered as UNESCO intangible cultural heritage in 2022.

The best-known part is the all-night dancing over Obon (お盆), which runs from evening until near dawn; the hour before first light is described as the high point of the whole season. In 2026 those nights were 13 to 16 August. That is given here as the 2026 dates, not as a fixed annual timetable: the schedule is published year by year, and this archive has not found a source stating that the all-night nights fall on the same dates every year.

For that reason, the dates below are a season rather than a list of nights. The window says when to start asking; the nights themselves have to be looked up for the year you are travelling.

Gujo Odori is a dance a visitor is meant to join rather than simply observe. The distinction is the town’s own: it is not 「見るおどり」 but 「踊るおどり」, not a dance to watch but a dance to dance. That is why this entry records it as open to all, where almost everything else in the archive is observe-only.

It is also a season rather than a single event. Danced over more than thirty nights from mid-July to early September, with one venue each night tied to neighbourhood festivals, it has a different shape from a festival with one date. It is something the town does for part of every year, not something staged on one day.

Gujo Odori was registered as UNESCO intangible cultural heritage in 2022, within “Furyu-odori, ritual dances imbued with people’s hopes and prayers”. The entry does not encode an annual timetable from a single year’s schedule; dates for any other year have to be checked when that year’s schedule is published.