Mikagura Festival

If you're welcoming the new year in Japan, why not go see a rare Shinto ritual in a mountain village? Mikagura Festival is held on January 3 and 4 every year at Kumano-jinja Shrine in the Tomiyama district of Toyone Village. The festival is a yudate kagura ritual, in which people offer a cauldron of boiling water to gods and receive a splash of the water to cleanse any impurities in prayers for the rebirth of life. Each dance and ritual performed to the flutes and beat of the drums has some meaning. The people of this village receive a new soul through this festival and welcome the new year with a clean slate. The dances done in masks of the gods are very humorous, too! Through the villagers performing as gods, people and gods unite. Come play with the gods in a way that you can't experience anywhere else.