The Year's Fortune-tellings with the rice in Mie Prefecture
1996 Volume 7 Issue 2 Pages 55-61
Details
1996 Volume 7 Issue 2 Pages 55-61
The year's fortune-tellings with rice in Mie prefecture are investigated and the relation between them and rice cultivatian is researched in this paper.
1. The range of the year's fortune-tellings with rice extends from Yokkaichi to Matsusaka and this region doubles a rice-producing district in the Ise Plains.
2. The objects of this divination are almost early-, middle-, and late-ripening varieties of rice plants. In a few cases, wheat, adzuki beans and vegetables are also added to them.
3. The divination has been taken shape as folklore festivals on Ko-Shogatsu, the new year's day according to the agricultural calendar, and afterwards, it also has become a Shinto rite such as praying for a fruitful year.
4. In some areas, they divine with adzuki beans and rice gruel. We suggest that this has a relation to the custom of eating adzuki beans and rice gruel, and ‘zenzai’, sweet adzuki soup with pieces of rice cake, and to pray health and happiness in the new year on Ko-Shogatsu.
