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カテゴリー1： 5. Rites and Festivals
カテゴリー2： Rituals in Daily Life
Title
§Life-cycle Rituals and Occupational Rituals
Text
Generally, Japanese matsuri can be divided into events that are repeated in yearly cycles, and rites of passage that take place when an individual experiences transitions in rank, status, or space. Such life-cycle rituals as hatsumiyamōde and shichigosan are counted among "rites of passage" in a narrow sense in that they are rituals that take place hand in hand with an individual's growth process. The annual observances that take place among the general populace are primarily based on the cycles of an agrarian culture; accordingly, the place occupied by those agricultural rituals held during the main cultivation processes for farm produce is an important one. Agricultural rituals can be divided up into rituals for rice cultivation and rituals for cultivating fields primarily tied to barley, foxtail millet, and Japanese millet. Rice cultivation rituals are the more important of the two types. However, it is apparent that in certain regions there are more than a few annual observances with powerful field cultivation elements to them such as mochinashi shōgatsu (New Year's celebration without the traditional rice cakes), the fifteenth night of the eighth month's imo meigetsu ("potato harvest moon"), and the mame meigetsu ("bean harvest moon"), among others. The rice cultivation rituals for a given year begin with prefatory rituals such as the ta asobi that take place mainly around koshōgatsu (Little New Year's celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month). These rituals take place before farmwork begins and entail a performance mimicking the various processes of rice production and invocations for abundant crops. When farmwork begins, the people greet the tanokami, the kami of the rice paddy. Seeding rituals (hashu girei) and rice-planting rituals (taue girei) are held when those activities take place. After rice planting, mushi okuri prayers are offered to drive out harmful insects and amagoi prayers offered to call for rain. In autumn, various rituals such as tōkanya, inoko, shimotsuki-matsuri, and ae-no-koto are performed to give thanks for the harvest and send the tanokami back off to the mountains. Aside from these agricultural observances, one also finds among annual observances rituals concerned with various other occupations such as hunting and fishing. There are many other rituals aside from those associated with agriculture that define annual observances. These include such events based on the cyclical waxing and waning of the moon as "moon waiting" (tsukimachi) and "sun waiting" (himachi), as well as those based on the eto (the twelve animal signs of the Chinese zodiac) such as hatsuuma, i-no-ko, and kōshinkō. The annual observances that take place among the public at large also include events that did not arise from some commoner calendar grounded in regional seasonal sensibilities but rather are Imperial Court rituals adopted by the public. Such rituals as jinjitsu (seventh day, first month), jōshi (third day, third month), tango (fifth day, fifth month), and tanabata (seventh day, seventh month) were all just seasonal observances of the court at one time that later spread out among the populace in such forms as the Doll Festival (Hinamatsuri), Boy's Day (Tango no sekku), and the Star Festival (Tanabata). Furthermore, one of the court's two ōharae (great purifications)—which were conducted in the sixth and twelfth months—the Nagoshi harae (that of the sixth month) was adopted by the populace. Together with the chi no wa kuguri (passing through a large ring made out of kaya reed) it took on the meaning of warding off disasters. Aside from the effects of their transition from courtly to commoner observance, these popularized festivals may also be characterized by their multilayered structure. Using April 8 as an example, in Japanese Buddhist circles services referred to as the Buddha's Anointment Assembly (Kanbutsu-e) or Flower Festival (Hana matsuri) are held this day to mark the historical Buddha's birthday. However, aside from this Buddhist event, there is also custom of making this the day for "opening the mountain" (yamabiraki-no-hi), and it is also a festival day on which the mountain kami (yamanokami) descends from the mountains and comes to the village. As this illustrates, even one observance may contain a variety of elements that are intricately entangled with one another. Whilere there has been a general tendency for popular festivals to diminish in importance as modernization and urbanization advance, such life-cycle rituals as shichigosan have on the contrary tended to become more extravagant. However, observances that serve to confirm membership in the local community have been on the decline throughout the modern period owing to the weakened power of those communities. Finally, it may be noted that various theories exist concerning what sort of relationship the unique folk observances handed down over the years in the Ryūkyūs may have with ancient forms of Japanese ritual.
— Iwai Hiroshi

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