There is a festival in Iwate whose entire purpose is to thank horses. On the second Saturday of June, sixty to a hundred farm horses — draft animals, some of them still working in the forests — are dressed in brilliant layered regalia hung with hundreds of bells, and walked fourteen kilometers from Onikoshi Sozen Shrine in Takizawa to Morioka Hachimangu, through freshly flooded rice paddies and then the streets of the city. The name, Chagu Chagu Umakko, is simply the sound the bells make. That sound is officially listed among the government's "100 Soundscapes of Japan" worth preserving.

The custom grows out of something architectural: this was great horse-breeding country, and its farmhouses — the L-shaped nanbu magariya — put family and horse under one continuous roof. A horse was household, not equipment. So when planting season ended, farmers dressed their partner in its finest and led it to the horse-god's shrine in gratitude. Seven hours of walking, one rule that tells you everything: only a child may ride. The adults walk alongside, holding the lead.

The procession leaves the shrine at 9:30 and reaches Morioka in early afternoon, with good viewing along the paddy roads near the start (green fields, mirrored water, bells) and festive crowds downtown. Morioka is two hours from Tokyo by Shinkansen; the shrine is a short taxi ride onward. Scholars note that a parade of this kind exists almost nowhere else on earth. It is hard to watch it dry-eyed, and nobody quite explains why.