Kannamesai Festival

[1][2][3] An imperial envoy carries the offering of rice harvested by the Emperor himself to Ise, as well as five-coloured silk cloths and other materials, called heihaku (幣帛).

[4] During the festival, the Emperor performs distance worship (御遙拝, goyōhai) at the Shinkaden (神嘉殿), a hall in the Imperial Palace.

[5] The festival may have its roots in the legend from Emperor Suinin's time in which Princess Yamatohime-no-mikoto looked for a place to enshrine the Imperial Family's ancestral spirits during which she made an offering of rice stalks in the beak of a white-naped crane.

[1] This became a true festival in 721 when Empress Genshō sent offerings called reihei (例幣) to Ise Shrine in the ninth month of the lunar calendar.

[3] After Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1873, the ninth month no longer aligned with the harvest season of rice, and the Kannamesai was moved to October in 1879 to compensate.