🏮 Kodomo Okowa Shiki
子供強飯式
Nikko, Tochigi (Ikuoka Shrine) · Every year on 25 November
72 days to go
Rooms around Nikko, Tochigi fill up while the festival is on.
The Children's Gohanshiki, held every year on November 25 at Ikuoka Shrine in Shichiri, Nikko City, Tochigi Prefecture, is a local traditional event praying for good health and a bountiful harvest. Like the Gohanshiki at Nikkozan Rinnoji Temple, it is performed as a ritual of Ikuoka Shrine with children in the leading roles. This ritual was taken over by locals after the separation of Shinto and Buddhism in the Meiji period; originally boys played mountain ascetics and strongmen, but eventually children became the center of the performance, and it has been passed down in this form to the present. On the day, signaled by conch shells and drums, elementary and junior high school students dressed as mountain ascetics and strongmen appear. Facing Taro-bo and Jiro-bo, played by shrine parishioners in kamishimo (formal samurai attire), they declare, "Not a single grain of the precious delicacies of mountain and sea may be left," and attendants, chanting in the Nikko dialect, "Ohanshiki ni annai mon," pretend to push heaped taro into their mouths one by one. Finally, the ritual of Harukoma, in which participants ride around on stilts, is performed, and the event comes to a close.
Getting there
From JR Nikko Line's Nikko Station or Tobu Nikko Line's Tobu-Nikko Station, take a Kanto Jidosha bus bound for Utsunomiya for about 5 minutes, get off at Ikuoka Shrine-mae bus stop, and walk about 15 minutes. By car, about 10 minutes from Nikko IC on the Nikko Utsunomiya Road. Temporary parking available.
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