F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-022
Izawanomiya Otaue-e (Sacred Rice-Planting Ceremony)
伊雑宮 御田植祭（磯部の御神田）いざわのみや おたうえまつり
One of Japan's Three Great Sacred Rice-Planting Ceremonies (alongside those at Katori Shrine and Sumiyoshi Taisha), the Izawanomiya Otaue-e is a National Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property conducted on the shrine's dedicated sacred rice paddies. Young women (saotome) plant rice seedlings in the ancient hand-transplanting method while, simultaneously, a group of men called the Shinobi-otoko — naked or near-naked, their bodies representing the raw fertility force of the male principle — rush into the paddy and seize the bamboo poles bearing the sacred offerings, wrestling with each other in mud that deepens as the ritual progresses. The ceremony's logic is straightforward within ancient Japanese agricultural religion: the women provide the technical skill of cultivation; the men provide the wild energy of fertility; the combination, enacted in the presence of the shrine's deity, consecrates the season's planting. Izawanomiya is a subsidiary shrine of the Grand Shrine of Ise, giving the ceremony an unusually elevated theological context.
H I G H L I G H T S
Highlights
- 01Near-naked men wrestling for sacred bamboo poles in a sacred mud paddy while women plant rice seedlings: ancient Japanese agricultural cosmology at full visible expression
- 02The ceremony is subsidiary to Ise Jingū itself — a rare access point to the Grand Shrine's agricultural ritual tradition
- 03June 24th sometimes falls on a weekday — plan accordingly, as the ceremony does not adjust its calendar for tourist convenience