御神渡り・湖の結氷Lake Suwa Ice

Every February, priests at a shrine on the shore of Lake Suwa walk out to look at the ice and decide whether a god has crossed it. They have been writing the answer down since 1443. The vocabulary below is the vocabulary that record is kept in — some of it ordinary winter Japanese, some of it words this one lake needed and no one else uses.

If you want the record itself, the full 583 winters are charted on the 御神渡り data page.

The crossing#

When Lake Suwa freezes over completely, the ice can buckle along a line and throw up a ridge that runs from one shore to the other. The shrine reads that ridge as the track of 建御名方神 crossing to reach 八坂刀売神.

The verb 渡る is the ordinary word for crossing a road, a bridge, or a river. It is worth knowing in its everyday sense first — 道を渡る, to cross the street — because the ritual name is built from exactly that plain meaning.

Ice#

結氷 is the compound to notice. 結ぶ on its own means to tie or to knot — you tie a shoelace, you conclude a contract — and the same character carries the sense of something forming or setting. Ice does not "become" in Japanese here; it ties.

When the god does not cross#

Most winters now, no ridge appears. The shrine has a word for that, and it is much older than the run of failures it currently describes.

The declaration is made at 立春. If no ridge has formed by then, the shrine judges that none will, and 明けの海 is announced for that winter. It has been declared eight winters running.

The ceremony#

When the crossing is certified, around sixty people walk out onto the ice to inspect the cracks and read from them the year's crops, its weather, and the fortunes of the age. The result is written up and filed with the Imperial Household Agency and the Japan Meteorological Agency — a divination document delivered to a national weather bureau, every year, still.

Words that only live here#

Two you will never need outside Suwa, included because the record is unreadable without them: 御渡帳 (みわたりちょう), the ledger kept from 1683 to 1871, and 佐久の御渡り (さくのみわたり), the third of the three ridges that must appear before the shrine will certify a crossing at all.