Izawa-no-miya Rice-Planting Rite

Ise Jingū: the shrine year, June to August 2024 (Ise Jingū official channel, official channel on YouTube)

Origin

Izawa-no-miya, a detached shrine of the Inner Shrine of Ise that enshrines the spirit of the sun goddess Amaterasu, is also known as the Tōnomiya, the distant shrine. It is said to have been founded some 2,000 years ago, in the reign of Emperor Suinin, by Izawatomi-no-mikoto, after Princess Yamatohime travelled through Shima seeking a place to gather offerings for the Ise shrines. The rite is tied to the local legend of the crane that dropped an ear of rice: Yamatohime is said to have met here a crane carrying a stalk that bore a thousand ears, and the song sung at the end still runs, “Long ago a crane dropped an ear of rice on the thousand fields of Isobe.” It was once held on a lucky day of the fifth lunar month; interrupted in 1871, it was revived in 1882 and has since been fixed on 24 June. The nine villages of Isobe take turns in groups, so that each serves once every eight years. It was designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1990.

What to look for

The Take-tori, before the planting. A sacred bamboo of six or seven metres, still in leaf and topped with two great fans, one round and one tall, is set up on the edge of the paddy; when it is brought down, near-naked young men, fishermen, drag it into the mud and fight over it. Shreds of the torn fans are offered at home on the household altar or to the guardian spirit of their boats, in prayer for a good catch. Then the young women and men join hands and circle the seedling bed three and a half times, take up the seedlings and plant them side by side, while behind them drums, sasara clappers, flute and two kinds of hand drum play and singers chant. Halfway through there is a break for sake poured by the planting women, with wakame seaweed, and as a side dish the sasara player dances the Saitori-sashi-mai. When the planting is done, the whole company dances its way back to the shrine singing songs of celebration, taking about two hours over less than two hundred metres.

How to watch

The day of the rite is also the day of the June Tsukinami-sai at Izawa-no-miya. The paddy grows rice for offerings to the shrines of Ise, and those who plant and play are local people who rowed out onto the Izawa inlet the day before to purify themselves in the sea.

If you go

Held every year on 24 June at Izawa-no-miya and its sacred paddy, about 200 metres away. The Take-tori comes first, then the planting, then the dancing procession back to the shrine. Izawa-no-miya is a three-minute walk from Kaminogō Station on the Kintetsu line.

Where

Izawa-no-miya

Shima, Mie

Sources

• Ise Jingū: detached shrines outside the precincts (Izawa-no-miya)
• Ise Jingū: annual events
• Agency for Cultural Affairs database: Isobe no Omita