Crow Wrestling

This Sunday we went to Kamigamo Shrine to see the Karasu-zumo Festival. This roughly translates as Crow Wrestling. :) It was ... unique.

As you can see from the photo, there was an elaborately dressed girl called the Saio-dai (festival heroine), two assistants for the Saio-dai, several Shinto priests in white ceremonial robes and black caps, a handful of sumo coaches in white uniforms that (of course) had crow designs on the back, two priests dressed in blue robes with crow's feet designs and crazy hats, and about two dozen young local boys wearing sumo loincloths.

The festival began with the entrance of the Saio-dai, the ritual "washing" (aka walking through a stream) of all the young boys, and several prayers and blessings involving all of the aforementioned participants. Then, two of the Shinto priests performed rites which included hopping from side to side and cawing like crows. This was particularly interesting because the priests seemed VERY serious, but then their hopping and cawing was VERY amusing. What a contrast!

Then, the young boys had a sumo competition. They were lined up in two teams: Red Flags vs. Plain Loincloths. Each boy got to wrestle at least two times and they were paired up to compete against other kids of roughly the same size. One boy was particularly tall though, and the crowd really sympathized with his opponents who were much, much smaller. It was fun watching them compete and watching the crowd (as well as some of the priests) shout encouragement enthusiastically.