In Japan, every autumn brings seasonal festivals in every corner of the country. In a typical autumn festival, people visit their local shrines to thank the god enshrined there for the just completed harvest. At the same time, the local people share the joy of harvest among themselves and pray for another bumper crop in the following year. During the festival, the people express their gratitude to the local god (“chinjyu-no-kami” in Japanese) in various ways such as by playing flutes and drums, dancing, and letting the children parade through the streets. These are performed as offerings to the god.

Japanese people’s faith in their “chinjyu-no-kami” is said to have formed in the Yayoi era (beginning around 200 B.C.) when farming started in Japan. Since then, people have built shrines for their local guardian gods and prayed for protection of paddy and other crops that they cultivated. The faith in, as well as the practice to enshrine, local gods, no doubt, emerged out of the farmers’ serious need to protect their crops.

There is a song about autumn festivals that goes “mura no chinjyu no kamisama no kyo wa medetai omatsuri bi don don hya ra ra don hya ra ra asa kara kikoeru fue taiko.” Every Japanese starts singing this song when he/she is a child, and can still sing it years later when they are adults. The word “akimatsuri,” or autumn festival, has a sound that inexplicably makes Japanese feel homesick. It can be said that “Akimatsuri” is not just prayer for a bumper crop, but it is a local spiritual culture handed down by generations of ancestors.