rom June to September each year, the festival has been held for over 300 years at shrines throughout the town as a traditional form of rural culture, offering prayers for abundant harvests of the five grains and good health.
The lion dances passed down at each shrine are carefully preserved and handed down to future generations.

The origin of the Iide Shishi Festival comes from performances in which young people of the village form a long, centipede-like lion dance (mukade-jishi) that moves wildly, as well as displays of strength contests performed by the strongest man in the village.

Among these events, the Hagyu Suwa Shrine Mikoshi Procession is the largest in the region, featuring a procession of approximately 200 participants, and is designated as an Intangible Cultural Property of the town.

The lion heads used in the lion dances take about five years to complete and are entirely hand-carved without preliminary sketches.
In recent years, young woodcarvers have also become active, and an increasing number of households display lion heads in their homes as protective talismans to ward off evil.