People in Aizubange call January 14th their New Year's Day. The calendar disagrees, but the town has held to this since 1625.

A straw bale is set down in the middle of the main street: four metres long, two and a half metres high, five tonnes. A hundred and ten men in loincloths divide into east and west and pull against each other three times, in a place where January temperatures sit below freezing and snow is ordinary.

What hangs on the outcome is more interesting than who wins. If the east side takes it, the price of rice will rise. If the west side takes it, the harvest will be abundant. These are the interests of the seller and the interests of the grower, and in a farming town both live on the same street. There is no result that is simply good news. Four centuries of pulling have preserved the contradiction rather than resolving it.

Pullers now come from across the country, on the understanding that a year of health follows. Afterwards 365 small fortune-bales are thrown into the crowd, one for each day, and about 130 stalls line the street until evening.