F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-040

Mie Tomida Whale Ship Festival (Toride Shrine)

三重・富田の鯨船祭り（鳥出神社）みえとみだのくじらぶねまつり

In the former whaling communities of Ise Bay, the memory of cetacean hunting — an industry that shaped the culture, the diet, and the self-image of Japan's Pacific coast communities for centuries — survives in the Kujira-bune Matsuri (Whale Ship Festival) at Toride Shrine in Tomida. Men carry elaborate festival floats constructed to resemble whales — bamboo frames covered in white fabric, built to scale — through the streets in a performance that reenacts the drama of the whale hunt: the approach, the harpooning, the struggle, the catch. The floats are a designation of Mie Prefecture as an Intangible Cultural Property. In an era when the ethics of whale hunting have become a global point of contention, the Tomida ceremony occupies an unusual position: a preservation of a working-community relationship with a specific marine animal, encoded in festival form for a world in which that relationship has become impossible to continue.