Iida City in southern Nagano is said to have more than two hundred puppet theater groups distributed across its villages and hamlets — a concentration of traditional performing arts that has no equivalent elsewhere in Japan. The puppetry tradition here is not the polished bunraku of Osaka's national theater; it is the village version, passed down through agricultural communities for centuries, performed at local shrine festivals as offerings rather than entertainment. The performances are seasonal, tied to the agricultural calendar: spring festivals before planting, autumn festivals after harvest. The puppets are handled by local farmers and craftspeople who have inherited the roles from the previous generation. The audience is primarily the community the performance is for. Visitors are welcome, but the performance is not adjusted for them. Farmhouse homestays in the Iida area offer the experience of being in this environment across multiple days: sleeping in the houses where the puppets are sometimes stored, eating with the families whose members perform in the festivals, understanding the relationship between agricultural life and theatrical tradition that makes Iida's puppet culture what it is. Seeing a puppet performance in a mountain shrine precincts, at night, with the community seated around it, is one of those experiences that makes the more famous versions of the same art seem like abstractions.