Playing in the Rice Fields in Hirugaya

A Night Ritual of Rice and Fire in the Hills of Makinohara

On the second Saturday of February, once the winter sun has dropped behind the hills, a stack of logs about two meters high is set alight in the grounds of Hiruko Shrine. The fire is the signal. For the next four to five hours, deep into the cold of the evening, a group of village men perform a sequence of seventeen numbered acts that imitate, step by step, a full year of growing rice. There is no flute, no drum, no recorded sound of any kind. The whole performance moves forward on shouted cues, spoken chants, and the gestures of the performers alone.

This is the Hirugaya no Taasobi, held in the Hirugaya district of Makinohara City in Shizuoka Prefecture. "Taasobi" translates loosely as "rice-field play," a form of agricultural ritual once widespread across Japan. Communities would act out plowing, planting, and harvesting at the start of the year, before any real work had begun, in the belief that performing the harvest in advance would help bring it about. The Hirugaya version is also known locally as Otauchi-matsuri and Hotahiki-matsuri. In March 2012 it was designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property by the national government.

From Temple Rights to a Village Inheritance

Rituals of this kind are thought to have taken shape in Japan between the late Heian and early Kamakura periods. In the eastern part of the old Tōtōmi province, where Hirugaya lies, written evidence places the practice in the region by the first half of the fourteenth century. A document associated with the Kasahara estate, dated 1333, records the word "taasobi" itself. The Hirugaya performance is believed to date from around the same era, which gives it a history of roughly seven centuries.

How the ritual came to this particular valley is recorded partly in writing and partly in local memory. The Tōtōmi-chishi, a regional gazetteer compiled by Yamanaka Toyohira, who died in 1836, notes that a rice-planting festival was held in Hirugaya on the thirteenth day of the first lunar month. Local tradition adds a further detail: the people of Hirugaya are said to have donated a flight of stone steps to the nearby Shingon temple of Saisan-ji, and in return received the right to hold the taasobi. A stone pillar bearing an inscription dated 1722 has been found, lending some weight to the account.

The ritual belongs to Hiruko Shrine, which stands near the southern end of the Hirugaya settlement, facing west toward the Hirugaya River. The shrine was once called Nishinomiya Daijingū and is said to have been founded by inviting the deity of Nishinomiya Shrine in Hyōgo. Until 1872 the taasobi was held on the thirteenth day of the first lunar month each year. From 1873 it moved to February 11. More recently, to suit the rhythms of modern working life, it has settled on the second Saturday of February.

Why the Ritual Was Recognized

The national designation rests on two grounds: that the ritual shows how a performing art has changed over time, and that it carries strong regional character. Taasobi in the Tōkai region typically combines two kinds of material. First comes a set of ceremonial acts that purify the ground and call in the gods; these are followed by a set of acts that mime the farming year. Hirugaya keeps this two-part structure clearly intact, which makes it a useful reference point for understanding the form as a whole.

Several features set it apart from other surviving taasobi. One is the doll, made of bundled cedar leaves, that represents the spirit of the rice and is treated through the evening as a living infant. Another is the unusual range of rice cakes prepared for and used in the ritual. The feature that registers most strongly with a first-time visitor is the complete absence of instruments. Many comparable rituals are carried by flute and drum. Here the performers rely on voice and movement alone, and the silence between their chants becomes part of the experience.

What to Watch For

The setting itself is the first thing to register. The shrine sits among trees, and the only light is the bonfire, here called the okagari. There are no stage lights and no amplification. Figures move in and out of the firelight, and for long stretches the loudest sound is the crack of burning wood.

The early acts are ceremonial. Numbered three through seven, they are known collectively as shihōgiri, literally "cutting the four directions." Performers carrying a long sword, a wooden sword, and other bladed implements raise them to the shoulder, swing them down, and arch their bodies, turning to face east, south, west, and north in turn. The purpose is to clear and protect the ground before the farming acts begin. Lit from below by the fire, the held poses carry a quiet drama.

From the ninth act onward the ritual turns to the rice year. Performers break the earth, praise the ox, tend the seedlings, thresh and wash the grain, plant the field, and cut the crop, each task given its own short act. During the plowing act the men chant "sanbai, sanbai" and mime eating a heaped bowl of rice. Watch for the costume worn through most of the evening: a reddish-brown garment, a striped hakama, bare feet in straw sandals, and on the head the ayagasa, a hat hung with countless strips of white paper that catch the firelight as the wearer moves.

The thread that ties the night together is a doll called the hotakozō, or nenne. Made of bundled cedar leaves, it stands for the rice spirit and is handled as a baby. A guardian role, played by a man dressed as a woman and known as the okkaa, carries the doll on the back. Tradition holds that couples hoping for a child place an undergarment inside this figure, and the role is reserved for a man recently married. In the first numbered act the doll is tied into a long straw rope and pulled in circles by the young men. At the close of the night it is bound to the trunk of the cherry tree beside the shrine hall and left there until the following year. The rice spirit is understood to settle into the tree, and the way the cherry blossoms that spring is read as a forecast of the coming harvest.

Visiting Hirugaya

Hirugaya is a small farming community in a narrow valley, ringed by the low hills at the southern edge of the Makinohara plateau. The flat ground along the river has long been given over to rice, while the slopes above are planted with tea. Makinohara is one of the largest tea-producing areas in Japan, and the green terraces are worth seeing on the way in, though the taasobi itself begins only after dark.

The shrine is reached from JR Kanaya Station by a bus on the Hagima line; get off at the JA Hagima Shiten stop, from which it is about a three-minute walk. By car, leave the Tōmei Expressway at the Sagara-Makinohara interchange and follow the National Route 473 bypass to the Nishihagima exit, around ten minutes in all. Note that the shrine has no visitor parking of its own, so plan accordingly.

A few practical points are worth keeping in mind. The ritual runs for several hours in the open air on a February night, so dress for real cold. Visitors are welcome to watch, and there is no admission charge, but the performance follows its own pace and is not arranged for an audience. People come and go through the evening rather than sitting through the whole sequence. Because the date and start time can shift slightly from year to year, it is sensible to confirm with the Makinohara City tourism office before traveling.