Ebisu with rod and fish sitting next to his 'father' Daikoku
Tōka Ebisu is one of the big festivals held at the beginning of the new year, around the 10th of the month when you’ll often often people with small businesses clutching good luck charms for the business year head, particularly sasu bamboo leaves adorned with lucky fortune boats bearing the Shichifukujin (Seven Lucky Gods). Here’s a description from the Kokugakuin Encyclopedia of Shinto, written by Iwai Hiroshi…
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“Tenth Day Festival of Ebisu.” Held on January 10, this is the first of several ritual celebrations of the year held to honor the god Ebisu, and is also therefore referred to as hatsu Ebisu (“the First Ebisu”). Well-known local celebrations are those at the Ebisu shrines at Osaka’s Imamiya, Hyogo Prefecture’s Nishinomiya, and Kyoto’s Ebisu Jinja near Kennin-ji.
Lucky charms at Nishinomiya Toka Ebisu (courtesy Yoshinobu Takemura)
Because Ebisu is one of the “seven gods of good fortune” and associated with monetary success, the festival is particularly popular among those involved in commerce. In Osaka, the custom is for each family to go and make a votive offering of daikon radish, taro, and sacred paper strips (go-hei) in the five colors in order to obtain good fortune. It is said that any man who partakes of these offerings will lose his memory.
Tales of Ebisu being the god of forgetfulness or hard of hearing are widespread. At Osaka’s Imamiya Ebisu Jinja, the custom is for worshippers to repeatedly shout, “We’ve come! We’ve come!” and bang on the sidings at the back of the shrine with their fists or small mallets they have purchased as they make their visit. [A similar practice is done at Ebisu Jinja, here in Kyoto.]
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To see just what ‘a rush’ the Toka Ebisu festival can be, you have to watch this video taken at Nishinomiya Shrine near Kobe. Only just over a minute long, but it’s pretty astonishing….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2UeudfQJYQ
Choosing the “luckiest man”! Every Jan 10th, there is a race at the Nishinomiya Jinja Shrine (in Hyogo Prefecture)…a mad dash of 230m from the gate to the main hall. The first 3 people to arrive are called the “Lucky Men”…and of course the winner is the “Luckiest Man”!
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