F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-047

Tado Taisha New Year Horse Race (New Year Shinto Rite)

多度大社 初詣・元旦馬駆け（新年神事）たどたいしゃ はつもうで もとたんうまかけ

Tado Taisha — Mie Prefecture's largest New Year destination, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors over the first three days of January — pairs its popular first-visit (hatsumōde) with the Gantan Uma Kake: a New Year horse race in which sacred horses (shinme) gallop through the shrine grounds as a divination of the coming year's prospects. The ritual connects directly to the shrine's founding mythology, in which the great deity Tado-no-Kami descended from the heavens on a white horse — so each year's race is a re-enactment of arrival, an annual re-commissioning of divine presence. The race is a calmer and more solemn counterpart to the shrine's famous May Agemba rite (the horse-climbing ceremony), offering a quieter but no less meaningful encounter with Tado's defining equine symbolism.