Kannamesai Festival, sometimes called Ōmatsuri[1] is one of the most important festivals of Ise Jingu. Held October 15-17 each year, this ritual makes offerings of the first harvest of crops for the season to Amaterasu.[2] An imperial envoy carries the offering of rice harvested by the Emperor himself to Ise, as well as five-coloured silk cloths and other materials, called .[3]
The festival is the culmination of a cycle of festivals that take place throughout the year, beginning in April with the which sees the sowing of the rice seeds. This is followed by where seedlings are transplanted in May, harvest at the in September, and finally, the Kannamesai.
Kannamesai is one of the three seasonal festivals held throughout year.
The festival is held before the Niinamesai at the Imperial Palace and follows the lunar calendar, taking place in the ninth lunar month and includes an imperial envoy carrying offerings of silk and other gifts.
The festival begins on the evening of October 15 with the in which a guardian kami of the shrine, Okitama, is invoked. This is followed by the, a divination ritual to determine if any of the clergy participating in the festival are impure, rendering them unfit to participate. The clergy then present, edible offerings in the form of fish, vegetables, water, and sake, followed by the presenting of heihaku offerings by an imperial envoy, and the rituals are completed with a kagura dance. These rituals are largely repeated twice for each of the Inner and Outer Shrines, once in the evening and once the following morning.[4]
During the festival, the Emperor performs at the, a hall in the Imperial Palace.[5]
The festival may have its roots in the legend from Emperor Suinin's time in which Princess Yamatohime-no-mikoto looked for a place to enshrine the Imperial Family's ancestral spirits during which she made an offering of rice stalks in the beak of a white-naped crane.
This became a true festival in 721 when Empress Genshō sent offerings called to Ise Shrine in the ninth month of the lunar calendar.[6] The practice stopped in the Middle Ages but restarted during the Edo period. After Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1873, the ninth month no longer aligned with the harvest season of rice, and the Kannamesai was moved to October in 1879 to compensate.