The Great Purification

The Oharae, the great purification, is the collective Shinto rite that cleanses a whole community of the pollutions (kegare) and offences accumulated over a period, held above all at the twice-yearly turning of the year in the sixth and twelfth months. Purity stands at the centre of Shinto, and impurity is understood to arise from contact with death, illness, and wrongdoing, and to obstruct right relationship with the kami; the Oharae removes it collectively rather than for an individual.

At its heart is the recitation of a formal liturgy, the Oharae no Kotoba or great purification words, one of the oldest Shinto ritual texts, and the use of symbolic means such as paper or wooden effigies onto which impurity is transferred and then cast away into a river or the sea. Performed anciently at the imperial court and today at shrines throughout Japan, the rite expresses the tradition's characteristic conviction that purity can be renewed and the community restored to a clean state.