Hōnensai
Harvest Festival is a fertility festival celebrated every year on March 15 in some locations in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. Hōnen means prosperous year in Japanese, implying a rich harvest, while a matsuri is a festival. The Hōnen festival and ceremony celebrate the blessings of a bountiful harvest and all manner of prosperity and fertility.
The best known of these festivals takes place in the town of Komaki, just north of Nagoya City. The festival's main features are Shinto priests playing musical instruments, a parade of ceremonially garbed participants, all-you-can-drink sake, and a wooden phallus.
The festival starts with celebration and preparation at 10:00 a.m. at Tagata Jinja, where all sorts of foods and souvenirs are sold. Sake is also passed out freely from large wooden barrels. At about 2:00 p.m. everyone gathers at Shinmei Sha for the start of the procession. Shinto priests say prayers and impart blessings on the participants and mikoshi, as well as on the large wooden phallus, which are to be carried along the parade route.
The 280 kg, 2.5 meter -long, 200–250 year old Japanese cypress wooden phallus called youbutsu or ō-owase-gata is carried from a shrine called Shinmei Sha in Komaki on a large hill or from Kumano-sha Shrine, to a shrine called Tagata Shrine in Komaki, Tagata, Aichi Prefecture.
When the procession makes its way down to Tagata Shrine the phallus in its mikoshi is spun furiously before it is set down and more prayers are said. Everyone then gathers in the square outside Tagata Shrine and waits for the mochi nage, at which time the crowd is showered with small rice cakes which are thrown down by the officials from raised platforms. The festival concludes at about 4:30 p.m.
The venerated Shinto deities are Mitoshi and the female deity Tamahime. Mitoshi is the son of the Shinto male deity Toshigami or known by locals as Ōtoshi and grandson of the Shinto deity Susanoo. Tamahime is a princess and the daughter of Ō'arata, the matriarch of Owari clan of her husband who had two sons and four daughters. After her husband's death, she returned to his hometown Arata, encouraged to cultivate with the help of her father Ō'arata, honor and achieved his achievements.
In Inuyama City, there is another festival Sunday before at Ōagata Shrine. This festival includes floats shaped like a vulva, which complement the phallic-shaped mikoshi used in the festival.