=The Nihiname=, or new-tasting, is the annual harvest festival when the new season’s rice was first tasted by the Mikado. The Ohonihe was only a more sumptuous form of it. The English counterpart of the Nihiname is Lammas, _i.e._ loaf-mass, in which bread made from the new season’s wheat was used for the first time in the Holy Communion. There was, in former times, a household as well as an official celebration of this rite. Strict people will not eat the new rice until it is over. =The Toshigohi= (praying for harvest) was another important ceremony of the state religion. Not only the special gods of harvest, but practically all the divinities were propitiated by offerings, and a _norito_ recited in their honour, of which the following is a passage:— ‘If the Sovran Gods will bestow in ears many a hand’s breadth long and ears abundant the latter harvest which they will bestow, the latter harvest produced by the labour of men from whose arms the foam drips down, on whose opposing thighs the mud is gathered, I will fulfil their praises by humbly offering first fruits, of ears a thousand, of ears many a hundred, raising up the tops of the sake-jars, and setting in rows the bellies of the sake-jars, in juice and in ear will I present them, of things growing in the great moor-plain, sweet herbs and bitter herbs, of things that dwell in the blue sea-plain, the broad of fin and the narrow of fin, edible seaweed, too, from the offing and seaweed from the shore, of clothing, bright stuffs and shining stuffs, soft stuffs and coarse stuffs—with these I will fulfil your praises.’ =Kiu no matsuri= (praying for rain) was a service in which the gods of eighty-five shrines were asked to send rain. To some of these a black horse was offered as a suggestion that black rain-clouds would be welcome.