![\"Aenokoto](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2977519.jpg\")
<\/a>Aenokoto takes place on December 5 and February 9 at the Yanagida Botanical Park in the town of Noto. The old farmhouse on the site was damaged in the January 2024 Noto Earthquake. After a two-year hiatus, the ceremony is set to resume in 2026. (\u00a9\u00a0Shimozato Kazur\u014d\/Haga Library)<\/p>\n
Aenokoto was designated an intangible cultural asset by the national government in 1976 and selected as a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage in 2009. This stimulated scholarly and media interest in the rite, but for some local inhabitants, dealing with the attention generated proved to be overly time-consuming, or led them to place vague hopes in tourism to make up for poor harvests. Nonetheless, while aenokoto seems like an old-fashioned rite that has survived despite the travails of those who uphold it, it continues to evolve to meet changing times.<\/p>\n
In my book, Yanagita Kunio to minzokugaku no kindai\u2014Oku-Noto no aenokoto no nijusseiki (Yanagita Kunio and Modern Folklore Studies: The Oku-Noto Aenokoto in the Twentieth Century), first published in 2001, I traced the complex relationship between this so-called niinamesai of the people and the times in which it has been practiced. Preeminent folklore photographer Haga Hideo<\/a> selected the center photo, which depicts aenokoto, for the book\u2019s cover because of the unique position the rite occupies in the history of folklore research. Haga interpreted it differently, as the essence of a folk belief, in contrast to Yanagita Kunio, doyen of Japanese folklore, who believed that it represented a ritual akin to the imperial niinamesai rite.<\/p>\n Yanagita\u2019s Interpretation of Aenokoto<\/p>\n Academic research into aenokoto began in earnest in 1934, led by Yanagita. Initially, Yanagita hoped to find material that would buttress his hypothesis on the rite\u2019s significance. After completing research, he interpreted its name to mean \u201cfeast\u201d and \u201critual,\u201d from ae and koto, but locally, it was simply called tanokami. At the time, there was just a single reference to aenokoto, but Yanagita selected that elaborate name to refer to the practice in general, because he needed something to support a certain supposition of his.<\/p>\n In 1951, the Allied Occupation authorities allowed research into imperial worship rites, which had been in abeyance since 1945, to resume. Sensing an opportunity, Prince Mikasa Takahito, a younger brother of Emperor Sh\u014dwa (Hirohito), founded the Niiname Research Society with Yanagita. The purpose of the society was to establish niiname as the raison d\u2019\u00eatre for the emperor system in cultural history terms, given that after the war Hirohito had proclaimed that he was not a deity in human form. That led Yanagita to develop the idea of ubuya (birth of the rice) as the source of Japanese identity, a belief in the rice deity that was identical among both the emperor and the people. Based on this, he drew parallels between aenokoto and niinamesai.<\/p>\n During the joint research in Noto carried out by the Federation of Nine Learned Societies, a cross-disciplinary grouping of scholars from various disiplines, from 1952 to 1953, researchers observed aenokoto as it was practiced in the field. Inspired by the Niiname Research Society, they noted that aenokoto had helped them picture how the niinamesai secret ceremony performed by the emperor was conducted. Furthermore, Yanagita\u2019s son-in-law Hori Ichir\u014d, a scholar of religion, reported that aenokoto had a religious dimension as a niiname ritual of the people. Hori\u2019s paper was published in the Niiname Research Society\u2019s academic journal, and Yanagita\u2019s interpretation of aenokoto as a ritual thus took root.<\/p>\n It becomes clear that in later years, instead of proper research being conducted to clarify the nature of aenokoto, Yanagita\u2019s imagined concept of the practice became mainstream orthodoxy. This strange development was also manifested in a visual image.<\/p>\n Around the time of the Niiname Research Society\u2019s founding, a local folklorist had obtained a photo of aenokoto, which shows an older man in a kamishimo, a kind of formalwear sleeveless jacket worn over kimono, offering a ritual prayer. That was the first photo Yanagita had ever seen of aenokoto, and it was repeatedly used in publications issued by the folklore research society he headed.<\/p>\n But no one knew the circumstances under which the photo had been taken. I questioned the families of the photographer and of the man in the photo and learned that the photo had been taken in 1943, and that this aenokoto was a reenactment put on for military officers at a ceremony marking the opening of a local Imperial Army maneuvering ground. I also discovered that the man in the photo was Nomoto Kichitar\u014d, who had been conscripted to transform aenokoto into a Shint\u014d ritual, based on his experience acting as a proxy for the local Shint\u014d priest, who. Thus, the photo had been taken in wartime, and whether Yanagita and his followers were aware of that or not, the photo had continued to be used to represent a folk version of niinamesai.<\/p>\n Highlighting the Simplicity of Folk Beliefs<\/p>\n Haga Hideo photographed the Nomoto family in 1954, around which time he began questioning whether that photo was an authentic representation of aenokoto. As he wrote in Tanokami: Nihon no inasaku girei (Deity of the Rice Paddies: The Rice Cultivation Rituals of Japan), \u201cThe manner in which the altar was set up, the offerings were displayed, and the ritual was performed in the home gave me the impression that the ceremony was very Shint\u014d-like in character. It lacked the simplicity of folk rituals. When I asked the family about this, they expressed pride in having acted as the priest\u2019s proxy during and after the war and said they believed that honoring the tanokami with a Shint\u014d altar was a sacred calling.\u201d<\/p>\n Haga had only just began his career as a photographer at the time, but he was nevertheless able to correctly interpret the special circumstances in which the photo had been taken, an issue that folklore scholars had missed.<\/p>\n Haga began researching aenokoto more intensively in Hanami, a district of Noto. In Hanami, since the men were fishers, the women, who farmed the land, were the rite\u2019s officiants. In contrast to the solemn atmosphere in the Nomoto home, in Hanami families carried out the ceremony wearing everyday clothing. Haga later told me that \u201cJust as \u2018folk\u2019 implies, I felt that the rite conducted in Hanami was truer to the meaning of that word.\u201d<\/p>\n Haga\u2019s Tanokami book culminates with his photos of Hanami, which became some of his best-known works. Haga returned to Noto again and again, creating a priceless record of the region\u2019s people and events: Wajima\u2019s morning market, the Nafune festival\u2019s gojinjo-daiko drumming and dancing, the ama female divers of Hegurajima, the Noto Nakajima Okuma Kabuto Matsuri in Nanao, and the rough-and-tumble Ushitsu Abare Matsuri.<\/p>\n Praying to Tanokami for Recovery<\/p>\n How has aenokoto fared since then? In the years after Japan\u2019s rapid economic growth, Oku-Noto\u2019s population steadily declined, farming was abandoned, and the keepers of traditional practices became fewer in number. But signs of revival have been apparent since such local folk practices were designated as intangible cultural assets by the government.<\/p>\n It is interesting to see that this ritual, which is practiced by individual families, has begun to be transmitted anew by communities or groups of interested parties. One of these, the environmental monitoring group Maruyama-gumi in Wajima, offers thanks by having the biodiversity of the satoyama rural woodland spaces stand in for the tanokami. One could call this movement a modern-day interpretation of aenokoto.<\/p>\n Misfortune struck the region when the January 2024 earthquake, followed by torrential rains later in the year, heavily damaged paddies, fields, and irrigation channels, crippling agriculture in many areas. This has delayed recovery, although perhaps because of the delay, some farming households seem to be placing a fresh focus on aenokoto. But the future of this practice also depends on how well agriculture and people\u2019s lives can recover and whether inhabitants continue to live in the area.<\/p>\n Haga\u2019s photos of aenokoto capture one family\u2019s sincere devotions to the tanokami. Aenokoto has continued unbroken until now, and I hope the family\u2019s prayers will be heard.<\/p>\n<\/a>
A family offers food and drink to the tanokami, represented here by bales of seed rice and a forked daikon radish. (\u00a9\u00a0Haga Hideo)<\/p>\n<\/a>
The photo of aenokoto seen by Yanagita for the first time. (Property of the Nomoto family\/Courtesy Kikuchi Akira)<\/p>\n<\/a>
Aenokoto at the Nomoto home, photographed by Haga Hideo in 1954. (\u00a9\u00a0Haga Hideo)<\/p>\n<\/a>
A Hanami district family welcoming the deity. (\u00a9\u00a0Haga Hideo)<\/p>\n<\/a>
In this family, a forked daikon radish representing the divine spirit was bathed reverently. (\u00a9\u00a0Haga Hideo)<\/p>\n<\/a>
The family later partook of the food offerings to the deity. (\u00a9\u00a0Haga Hideo)<\/p>\n<\/a>
A group welcomes the deity in front of Maruyama hill, presenting a list of the living creatures monitored during the past year to represent the divine spirit. Offerings later enjoyed by the group included bread made from rice flour. (Courtesy Maruyama-gumi)<\/p>\n