F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-064
Shiritumi Matsuri (Bottom-Pinching Festival)
尻つみ祭りしりつみまつり
The Otonashi Shrine in central Itō City occupies a site whose principal historical association is the clandestine romance between Minamoto no Yoritomo — then in Izu exile in the late twelfth century — and Yae-hime, daughter of the local lord Itō Sukechika. According to the Itō Tourism Association's official documentation, the legend records that in the darkness of the shrine, where no light or voice could betray the meetings, the participants communicated the arrival of a sake cup by pinching the buttock of the person beside them. This folk account — whether historical or mythological — provides the foundation for an annual ceremony held each November 10th from 18:30 to 21:00, in which participants compete in a form of sumo wrestling by buttock contact (shiri-zumō) to the accompaniment of court music (gagaku). The ceremony's popular Japanese classification as tenge no kisai ('a prodigy among festivals') reflects its genuine rarity: a religious ceremony explicitly thematising body-to-body contact within a sacred space, deriving its theological rationale from a medieval romantic legend rather than from agricultural, fire, or apotropaic tradition. Advance reservation is required for participation in the competition; observation is open to the public.
H I G H L I G H T S
Highlights
- 01The ceremony's foundation in the Yoritomo-Yae-hime legend gives it a historical romanticism unusual in Japanese folk ritual: where most unusual ceremonies encode agricultural prayer or apotropaic function, the Shiritumi derives its sacred quality from a specific narrative of medieval intimacy, which the ceremony re-enacts in physical form.
- 02The transition from the original darkness-and-tactile-contact form of the ceremony to the current gagaku-accompanied sumo competition illustrates how folk religious practice adapts its expressive form across centuries while retaining its foundational meaning — a process of ceremonial transformation that cultural historians find as significant as the ceremony's content.
- 03Advance reservation is required for competition participation, and the small scale of the ceremony in a residential neighbourhood shrine makes this one of the most intimate and logistically accessible unusual festivals in Japan's calendar, while simultaneously imposing real obligations of neighbourhood courtesy on visitors.
D E E P D I V E