🏮 Nagoshi Harae

夏越祓

Kyoto (Kamigamo Shrine and Other Shrines) · Every year on 30 June

Summer festival

289 days to go
Rooms around Kyoto fill up while the festival is on.

Nagoshi no Harae, held on June 30, is a traditional Shinto ritual performed at shrines around Japan, including Kamigamo Shrine, Yoshida Shrine, and Jonangu Shrine in Kyoto. It is an event to cleanse oneself of impurities accumulated over the past six months and to pray for good health in the remaining half of the year. A chigaya (thatch) ring taller than a person is set up, and visitors pass through it. The origin of this festival goes back to a legend in which Susanoo no Mikoto was warmly entertained by Somin Shorai, and those who wore a chigaya ring around their waist escaped epidemic disease. The summer purification at Kamigamo Shrine is a ritual with a long history, celebrated in Fujiwara no Ietaka's poem in the Hyakunin Isshu: "In the evening breeze by the Nara no Ogawa." The highlights are the purification practice of passing through the chigaya ring in a figure-eight pattern, left, right, left, and the hitogata nagashi, in which impurities are transferred to a paper doll that is then floated down a river. At Kamigamo Shrine, hitogata nagashi is performed on the Nara no Ogawa from 8:00 p.m., and at Jonangu Shrine, the "beloved car chigaya ring passing," in which cars also pass through a chigaya ring, is popular. In addition, the custom of eating Minazuki, a Japanese sweet topped with azuki beans, still remains.