Otaue Matsuri - Rice Planting Festival

Turning a backbreaking chore into a competition makes the task fun for the whole community! Nonogawa may be small, but the town is fighting back against depopulation and losing traditions by being flexible and inventive.  

Before Planting

In early May, the local Guardian, wearing a mask and a white and blue traditional rice-planting costume, stands beside the local priests to pray over the fields, rice ducks, and tractors. (The tractors are a recent addition because one year several needed costly repairs, and it delayed the rice planting that year.)   Then fields are plowed and leveled for even water distribution. Nowadays, local farmers share tractors and help each other plow the valley's fields. Farmers in the old days used a team of oxen.   Finally, the sluice gates are opened, and water fills the interconnected fields.    

Planting Festival

On the last weekend of May, residents (and tourist spectators) gather for the festival at the twin rice fields next to Tsukaji Temple.   The priests pray over the temple's fields. Then, by chanting a norito (a traditional prayer) and waving a fresh-cut branch over them, the priests bless and purify the rice seedlings to be planted and the participants who will do the planting. The twin fields, rice plants, and participants stand in for agriculture in the whole area. Young ladies in fine green and red kimonos hand out the seedlings to the participants.    

Competition

What spectators anticipate most is the rice-planting contest between a team of men and a team of women. The competition is a recent addition in order to keep interest in the rice planting festival. Before that, it was becoming hard to find enough people to help, due to a declining small-town population.   The team with the most perfectly planted field wins, but the trick is they have to plant in time to a rapid drumbeat and sing along with everyone to the rice planting song!   To keep things fair, two judges—one male and one female—are drawn from those that apply. The judges must agree on the winner.   The winning team is treated to a pampering night at the town's ryokan and onsen (traditional inn and public bath).   Rice that is grown here will be used in the Rice Harvest Festival to Inari in late October. It's always the best of the Nonogawan Mochigome.    

Post Festival

Afterward, all other fields may be planted. Usually farmers use tractors to speed up the work.