Honyarado Snow Huts
This structure is called a honyarado in the local dialect. Traditionally, these snow huts were constructed for a winter event called torioi, or “bird chasing.”
Torioi has long been a significant tradition for Tokamachi’s agricultural communities. Traditionally held on January 14, the custom is a ceremonial expulsion of birds that might eat the crops. Children parade through town, singing the torioi song and clapping wooden blocks together. Residents reward them with mochi rice cakes and other sweets. The children play late into the night inside a honyarado, where a small charcoal stove provides warmth.
Similar snow huts are known as kamakura in other snowy areas of Japan. The local name likely comes from the torioi song, which expresses shooing off birds in a rice field with the onomatopoetic word honyara! Loosely, one might translate the name honyarado as “shoo-shoo huts.”
While no longer so tightly tied to agricultural life, torioi and honyarado remain a beloved part of the winter calendar in Tokamachi—one of the many ways residents turn the region’s heavy snowfalls into a source of fun and community building.
