Part 10: The Tomamae Bear-Lion Dance

The Tomamae Bear-LionDance

A note to readers: when you see lion dance, think of any movie with a Chinese festival or the likes in it. Whenever a couple of people are under a big dragon-looking thing, that’s a lion dance. So this bear-lion dance is a riff on that traditional idea.

On March 1st, 1982, the Bear-Lion Dance of Tomamae was designated as the first intangible cultural artifact of Tomamae. A lion mask brought from the Ōgamizumi Shrine of the once-flourishing Haboro Coal’s Sakubetsu mine inspired the creation of the Tomamae Bear-Lion Dance Preservation Society was established and it was due to their tireless work that they were awarded the designation.

Roughly three acts, it consists of farmers laboring over the frontier, a great beast which attacks this brutally cold fringe of civilization, and farmers getting back on their feet. Onlookers watched the dance, invented spontaneously by the 20 members of the Preservation Society, with anxiety and sweaty palms. The first performance was on November 9th, 1944, for the Cultural Festival Exhibition held at the Childrens’ Hall of Kotanbetsu. More than 400 people watched this magnificent performance.

The story opens with a sincere depiction of frontier life. Settlers wave axes and hoes on the former site of the forest, now totally abandoned. They are troubled little: hardly thinking of harvests or labor, they dream of tomorrow. It is December: the end of the year is fast approaching, and the sudden appearance of a bear turns it into a horror story.

The frontier folk run about in a panic. The great beast unleashes the limits of its wrath while avoiding the exterminators. Enter the veteran of a hundred battles, the old matagi hunter. Against heavy odds, the bear is at last brought down. The farmers overcome their sadness, pick themselves back up, and pour their energy into working the fields. The end.

This moving performance earned critical praise and popular reception. And in 1986, it even received the Distinguished Award for Preservation of Cultural Assets. However, behind the scenes not all was well. “At first there were more than thirty members, but some leaving due to advanced age or other reasons means that currently the membership has decreased to half of that, and we are worried about maintenance and the ability to continue,” said Nakano Yoshiharu, president of the Tomamae Neighborhood Alliance and chair of the Tomamae Bear-Lion Dance Preservation Society.