F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-011

Ōagata Shrine Hōnen Festival (Feminine Fertility Ceremony)

大縣神社 豊年祭（おおがた祭）おおあがたじんじゃ ほうねんさい

On the same day and in the same geographic zone as Tagata Shrine's famous phallus procession, Ōagata Shrine conducts its complementary ceremony — a feminine fertility rite centered on the procession of a pink, peach-shaped portable shrine, with pink rice cakes distributed to the assembled crowd. The juxtaposition of the two shrines' simultaneous ceremonies on March 15th — the male principle at Tagata, the female at Ōagata, both within a short distance in northern Aichi — constitutes what scholars of Japanese folk religion have called the most concentrated surviving public expression of yin-yang fertility cosmology in the country. The Ōagata ceremony is smaller and less internationally known than Tagata's, which gives it a more local quality that is in some respects more intimate and more interesting. The pink peach symbolism connects to the Momotarō folk legend whose geographic origin is the Inuyama area, adding a layer of literary mythology to an already rich ceremonial landscape.