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Japan trip
Day 5 - 10th June - Fushimi-Inari Shrine, Taue-Sai Festival (Rice Planting Ritual), Kyoto (Part 4)
While in Japan I witnessed not one, not two but three Matsuris (festivals) - Taue-Sai Festival (Rice Planting Ritual) in the Fushimi-Inari Shrine, Kyoto; Onda Shinji (Rice Planting Festival) in Osaka and Aoba-san in Koyasan. Luckily, each was more interesting than the last.
Map
Roadside shrine with rock with bib inside
Female Japanese Priest (I'm not sure whether they're nuns, monks, priests or priestesses - I Google Image-d "japanese priest female" - and got softcore pornography ([with the words: ""She is not a virgin anymore," pronounced the conservative Japanese priest. "She has been bonked in her dreams," he added."] Damn Japs.)
Unagi before it's been seasoned to death
Exhibition space (?)
Wooden tablets with people's names (?) on them
Another map
[Japanese] Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines are generally more private places than churches, with some of the sacred area closed off (even if you're not barred from entry altogether, like at Ise), even from worshippers (let alone tourists). They don't even let you look at the most sacred bits sometimes.
God in gate (?)
Information plaque
Statue of Inari, the fox god
A peek at a ceremony
Shrine
I then made my way to the venue of the festival.
Empty field
Kiasu photographers
Sign
Observers. People came prepared, with some bringing their own chairs. Almost all were old - the young have foresaken their traditions (the giggling gaggles of schoolkids were conspicuous by their absence). Also, note the Catholic nun. Maybe she was there to disrupt the ritual.
Guy with a Twin Lens Reflex (Yashica 12). It must be ancient!
I don't often do this, but:
KAWAII!!!
You see how hard it was to get the Samurai Dog to look at me.
With tardiness uncharacteristic of the Japs ("Researchers Robert Levine and Ellen Wolff rank Japan as the country with the best “punctuality concept.”"), the festival started more than an hour late (it wasn't wrong information from the hostel, since posters advertising the festival also stated 1pm). This means that the rice harvest will be poor this year (since Fushimi-Inari starts the ball rolling with the rice planting rituals).
1 hr 10 minutes late, some farmers finally came in with a sacred chest and proceeded onto the stage, preceded by a priest and followed by other priests
People in bathrobes from the rest of Japan then filed into the VIP seats
After blessing of the fields...
And the fields were blessed
After more milling
The old rice farmers shuffled down
Made-up girls prepared to dance
Everyone took their positions
And, to horrible Japanese Traditional Religious music, the farmers started planting the rice
And the girls started dancing
Dancing Girls
More Dancing
The dancing girls had other girls to fold/unfold their trains.
At some point people got impatient, so the farmers were called back onstage for the ceremony to finish. It was half an hour only - I'm sure this was because it was televised.
After everyone else on stage and the people in bathrobes had filed out, I thought they were going to call in robots to finish off the job, but instead the farmers went back to work, supervised by a priest and two assistants.
The majority of the people taking pictures with their phones were girls, and the majority of those using SLRs were middle-aged-or-older men.
