It’s a muggy, overcast afternoon in mid-July, and two men scrunched into barrel-shaped containers made of straw are lying on the asphalt, blowing into conch shell horns as if their lives depend on it. Happi-wearing locals relentlessly drench the two with buckets of water and haul them a few meters at a time toward the gates of Gonshoji, a Buddhist temple nestled in a quaint corner of Tokyo’s southern Ota Ward.
This isn’t some bizarre form of punishment but a 700-year-old folk ritual born out of a desperate plea to alter the course of nature’s meteorological whims — an ancient tradition some are turning to as Japan’s weather grows more intense and erratic due to climate change.
“During a severe drought in 1321, suffering villagers begged the second-generation priest of our temple to pray for rainfall,” says Yuya Hojo, the deputy chief priest of Gonshoji.