🏮 Nennenko Matsuri

ねんねこ祭

Kozagawa, Wakayama (Koba Shrine) · Every year on 31 December

Traditional performing arts

108 days to go
Rooms around Kozagawa, Wakayama fill up while the festival is on.

The Nenneko Festival in Tahara, Kushimoto Town, Higashimuro District, Wakayama Prefecture, is handed down as a prefecture-designated intangible folk cultural property. It begins with a remote worship of the sunrise at dawn, and in the leisurely procession that advances one step at a time to the sound of bells, a dressed-up "gohamochi girl" holds aloft a bucket containing rice and sakaki branches, accompanied by an assisting woman who leads the way at the front. The festival's origin is traced to Empress Jingu, and it is an ancient-style ceremony; before the main hall, an old-fashioned purification rite is performed. What is distinctive is the child-rearing ritual at the shrine office, where a Shinto priest and a boy take turns placing a rolled mat, a red pillow, and a cloth shape of a breast on their shoulders while chanting "nenneko, nenneko, kororon yo," creating an atmosphere full of humor. In the latter half of the festival, a lion dance of the Koza school, said to have been learned from Takaike, is dedicated for about two hours. From the procession to the rituals and the lion dance, the series of events has been passed down.