"One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person." - William Feather

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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...


Pandora's Box was opened and the sacred rice plants taken out


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.