On the second morning of the year, while it is still dark and the snow lies deep across the Hachimantai basin, four hamlets in northern Akita begin to dance. Osato, Azukizawa, Nagamine, Yachi: each keeps its own portion of a single ceremony, each rehearses it privately before setting out along the white roads toward a shrine that has been waiting since 718.

They do not call it bugaku here. They call it Zaido, a word whose origin has been argued over for centuries without resolution. Whatever it is, it bears little resemblance to the courtly music its official name suggests. There is a flute. There is a drum. There is no elegance in the imperial sense, only weight, and repetition, and the particular seriousness of men performing something their grandfathers performed, for reasons nobody feels obliged to explain.

By eight the four streams have converged. The dances follow in order: a lion, two horses, children as birds, then figures in gold and black masks carrying swords. By noon it is over for another year.

UNESCO added it to its list in 2009. The village had been doing it for some 1,290 years by then. There is exactly one morning.