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🏮 Tado Taisha Gorei Sai

多度大社御例祭

Kuwana, Mie (Tado Grand Shrine) · Every year on 4 May

Mikoshi

232 days to go
Rooms around Kuwana, Mie fill up while the festival is on.

Tado Taisha Reitaisai is the most important of the annual rituals held at Tado Taisha in Kuwana City, Mie Prefecture, and is commonly called the Tado Festival. It features sacred entertainment events centered on the Ageuma Shinji (horse-riding ritual) and Yabusame Shinji (horseback archery), and attracts hundreds of thousands of worshippers every year. The festival is said to have originated during the Ryakuō era of the Northern and Southern Courts period (1338–1341), started by a samurai family that held a portion of this land, but the shrine records were scattered and lost in the fires of war caused by Oda Nobunaga in 1571, so the details are unknown. The festival, which had been interrupted, was revived through the efforts of Honda Tadakatsu, who became the lord of Kuwana Castle in 1601; he donated a mikoshi (portable shrine) and established the mikuriya system, and the festival shifted from being led by samurai to being conducted by the common people. It received the protection of successive lords of the Kuwana domain, and in 1978 it was designated a Mie Prefecture Intangible Folk Cultural Property. Currently, due to the declining birthrate and aging population, the mikuriya, which originally consisted of seven districts, is inherited by three districts: Koyama, Totsu, and Tado, and three riders selected from each district dedicate the Ageuma and Yabusame. The district that serves as the first rider in rotation each year is called the "Hanaba," and on the day of the regular festival, they purify themselves in the Ochiba River at dawn, and ceremonies are held at the main shrine, Tado Shrine, and the separate shrine, Hitotsumatsu Shrine.