Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
excuses for a good time involved communal labor, such as rice-planting, well-digging, and
re-roofing, and, of course, a successful harvest had to be rounded off with as great a feast
as could be afforded.
Agricultural festivities came round every year, but the supreme opportunity for enjoy-
ment for the poorer farmers came only once in a lifetime, with the pilgrimage to Ise. The
great shrine of Ise, on the east of the Kii peninsula, and reached by a diversion from the
great road between Edo and Osaka, had been established in early times as the shrine of the
sun goddess, the ancestress of the Imperial family. It was not until the sixteenth century
that commoners had gone to worship there, but during the Tokugawa period the number of
pilgrims increased greatly, and it became the ambition of nearly everyone in Japan to go
thereatleastonceinalifetime. Theactual actofworshipwasnotcomplicated; itconsisted
of going to each of the two shrines that made up the Ise complex, prostrating before the
sanctuary,clappingone'shandstocalltheattentionofthegoddess,and,inreturnforacon-
tribution to the shrine funds, receiving protective tablets and amulets to take back home.
There were other small shrines and also temples to be visited, but by the seventeenth cen-
tury the main object of the trip for the pilgrim was the entertainment that was available
when he got there.
