Encyclopedia of Shinto

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詳細表示 (Complete Article)

カテゴリー1： 5. Rites and Festivals
カテゴリー2： Rituals in Daily Life
Title
Kaza-matsuri
Text
A village communal invocation event conducted around the two-hundred and tenth day of the year, or around "hatsusaku" (first day of the eighth month by the old calendar), to ward off damaging winds. Also referred to as kazahimachi. The two hundred and tenth day is counted from the beginning of spring (the fourth day of the second month) by the old calendar, placing it around September first in the Western calendar. In many regions, rice plants are just coming into bloom around the same time of year that typhoons strike, and so these invocations are carried out made to calm the winds. There are many examples of such invocations being conducted as rituals in shrines as well. A particularly famous example is the Fūjinsai at the Tatsuta Grand Shrine (in Ikoma District, Nara Prefecture), first mention of which appears in the Nihon shoki in the Tenmu Emperor's fourth year (675), in the fourth month on the day of the mizunoto ram. The Ōimisai of the shrine Hirose Jinja (in Kita Katsuragi District, Nara Prefecture) is held on the same day. Both festivals are seen as important agricultural festivals that offer invocations for the winds and rain to be calmed and for harvests to be bountiful. The Tatsuta Grand Shrine's Fūjinsai was originally conducted in the fourth and seventh months, but after some time it was moved to the two hundred and tenth and two hundred and twentieth days of the year when the danger of wind damage is greatest. There are also places where the kazamatsuri is conducted in conjunction with rituals for warding off harmful birds and insects. In one part of Oita Prefecture, the kazamatsuri is conducted on the New Year's Day and the fourth day of the seventh month of the old calendar. Also, in the northeastern Tōhoku region there is a custom known as the amekaze matsuri wherein a male and a female doll are carried to the outskirts of a village and burned.
— Iwai Hiroshi

Pronunciation in Japanese/用語音声

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