Nara's "rice porridge divination" to foretell crop harvest in 2021

Tomi Shrine, Nara -- Rice porridge divination, a tradition where people use rice porridge inside of bamboo tubes to foretell the crop harvest for the year, was held on the morning of February 1st.



This tradition has been passed down for over 300 years now, and is considered to be one of Nara's spiritual customs.

The Shinto priest and shrine parishioner took out the bamboo tubes from the iron pot where the rice porridge with adzuki beans was being cooked.

The bamboo tubes are about 20 cm in length and 2 cm in diameter. Each tube is labelled for each crop like rice and strawberries. If more rice and beans are found in the tube, then that means that the harvest will be bountiful for the corresponding crop.



The Shinto priest and the shrine parishioner sliced the bamboo tubes open, and announced the results in 9 stages from the absolute best to the complete worst. The gathered crowd cheered.

According to the predictions, Nara will have a bad harvest for rice, but Japanese plum and persimmon will be bountiful this year.

Every year, they serve the rice porridge to the visitors; however, because of COVID-19, it was cancelled.

Tomoyoshi Sugimura, the parishioner representative, said, "Last year, we had brown planthoppers ruin our rice plants. So, the prediction for a bad harvest came true. I really hope that the prediction will be wrong this time since we will also have a bad rice harvest this year.”

Source: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20210201/k10012843411000.html?utm_int=news-culture_contents_list-items_004