Hōnensai at Tagata Shrine

Origin

Tagata Shrine enshrines two deities: Mitoshi-no-kami, of the harvest, and Tamahime-no-mikoto, of descendants. **That both prayers live at the same shrine explains the festival exactly.** What is formally valued, though, is the shape of the procession: the city of Komaki describes it as preserving an old form of rite in which seed rice is walked through the district and handed from a Buddhist temple to a Shinto shrine. The column is ordered — sakaki branches, offerings of sacred sake and food, a Buddhist image, a seated straw figure — so **the Shinto and the Buddhist still travel together**. It was once held on the fifteenth day of the first month. It was designated an intangible folk cultural property of Komaki in 2016.

What to look for

Three palanquins travel in the procession. One carries a seated image of the goddess and is borne by men who have reached sixty; one carries an image of the consort of the shrine’s deity and is borne by local men in an unlucky year; the third carries the carved object, and is borne by men of forty-two — which the shrine calls a service performed once in a lifetime. Five women, chosen by lot, walk with smaller carvings, and the column also includes the god of crossroads and a band of court musicians. The large carving is cut afresh from cypress every year, so it is never the same one twice. At the end, rice cakes are thrown to the crowd.

How to watch

The shrine itself writes that everyone smiles here, across every border, so smiling is not the problem. What to avoid: stepping into the procession’s path, touching the bearers, and blocking the people who have come to pray. The crowd packs tight when the rice cakes are thrown.

If you go

**The date is fixed to 15 March, so the weekday shifts each year.** It is a daytime event and the procession moves in the afternoon. The starting point is set each year to one of two nearby shrines, so **it is not always the same place**. There is no visitor parking and the shrine asks people to come by public transport. It is reachable from Nagoya by the Meitetsu line.

Where

Tagata Shrine

Komaki, Aichi

Sources

• Tagata Shrine, official page on the Hōnensai
• City of Komaki, on the Hōnensai at Tagata Shrine
• Aichi Prefecture tourism association
• Cultural Heritage Online, Agency for Cultural Affairs
• City of Komaki, on the designated procession