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🏮 Ontsutsu Kayu Matsuri Kento Sai

御筒粥祭・献灯祭

Itoigawa, Niigata (Hakusan Shrine) · Every year on 14 January

122 days to go
Rooms around Itoigawa, Niigata fill up while the festival is on.

At the Nō Hakusan Shrine in Itoigawa, Niigata Prefecture, the Otōgayu Shinto ritual and the Kentō Festival are held every year on January 14. These are traditional events praying for a good harvest and household safety, carrying on the region's agricultural culture. In the Otōgayu ritual, rice ground with a stone mill is boiled together with reeds to make porridge, and the condition of the porridge packed in the reeds is used to divine the year's crop yield. This is a ritual for predicting abundance or scarcity passed down from ancient times. From the evening of the same day, the Kentō Festival begins, and large candles are offered one after another and lit. A ritual divining the year's harvest and a festival of lamplight meet in a single night — a winter tradition of Itoigawa.