Isonokami Shrine New Year Ceremony (Birth Cry Festival)

石上神宮摂社での元旦祭・産声祭いそのかみじんぐうもとたんさいこわいさい

D A T E2026-01-01

Japan's oldest shrine — Isonokami Jingū, whose founding predates the Imperial capital at Nara — greets the New Year with a ceremony unique in the Japanese ceremonial calendar: the Ubugoe-sai (Birth Cry Festival), in which the sounds of new life are presented to the shrine's divine sword as an offering of vitality for the coming year. The free-roaming roosters that have occupied the shrine precincts since the Nara Period are the ceremony's living participants: their crowing at dawn constitutes the original "birth cry" (ubugoe) offered to the ancient sword deity to inaugurate the year. The resulting New Year atmosphere at Isonokami — ancient shrine, dawn darkness, free-ranging birds, a sword whose power the ceremony is invoking — has no equivalent in the Yamato region.

H I G H L I G H T S

Highlights

01A sacred sword receives the cries of newborn life as its New Year offering — a theological specificity that rewards time spent understanding it
02Roosters roaming the shrine grounds as they have for 1,300 years, crowing at dawn as the ceremony's primary participants
03Japan's oldest shrine on New Year's dawn: the most temporally compressed moment in the Yamato region's annual ceremonial calendar

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