"Cry Oh Baby Cry" : Crying Baby Festivals in Japan

Japan has numerous traditional festivals nurtured through its thousand odd years of history. One of them is Crying Baby Festival to wish for new-born babies' health and good fortune by forcing them to cry out loud.

Tateyamacho, Kanuma City, has an ages-old "Cry Oh Baby Cry" Festival in the precincts of Ikiko Shrine every  September. Enshrined there is the God of easy delivery and child rearing.

The festival is actually a Sumo Tournament of new-born babies to outcry the opponents. At the peak of a new Golden Week in September, the shrine was crowded with record 1,530 well-wishers from all parts of the country.

Ikiko Shrine's Crying Baby Festival is a traditional event originating in an ancient legend. Once when a parishioner's baby died, the whole family prayed for his well-being, and three days later the dead baby cried out loud to revive. The festival draws every year thousands of parents with their new-born babies to share divine favor.

Babies will enter the ring in the arms of parishioners in Sumo style; they will be raised head high to a yell to let them cry out loud. The louder, the better.

Festivals of the crying-baby family are found all over Japan mostly for wishing health and good fortune for the babies but some for introducing new-born members of local communities by forcing them cry out. In other festivals babies can either cry or smile to win.

From Namioka Shrine up north in Aomori down south to Saikyouji Temple in Nagasaki, there are known today 16 baby festivals of either cry or smile. A variation in Iwate Prefecture pits 2-year-old eldest sons against one another.

A company employee Rie Ono, 36, of Kanuma City told smiling her 1-year-old baby Rio "was crying hard even before the match".