By TADASHI MIZOWAKI/ Staff Writer
June 11, 2023 at 19:02 JST
Students from local elementary and junior high schools ring bells and beat drums during the “mushiokuri” event on June 10 as they walk along paths at the Maruyama Senmaida terraced rice paddies in Kumano, Mie Prefecture. (Tadashi Mizowaki)
KUMANO, Mie Prefecture--Farmers and others holding torches chanted, rang bells and beat drums as they walked through terraced rice paddies here in a traditional event.
In the falling dusk, 1,340 candles were lit along the narrow paths on June 10, the same number as the rice fields that constitute the Maruyama Senmaida terraced rice paddies.
The time-honored event called “mushiokuri,” in which rice growers originally drove away harmful insects and prayed for a good harvest, lasted until 1953.
But it was revived in 2004, when Kumano Kodo, an ancient pilgrimage trail that passes through the city, was listed as a World Heritage site, to hand down the cultural tradition.
The event this year was the first in four years to be open to the public because only members of a group working to preserve the terraced rice paddies participated for three years until 2022 due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
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