Here, planting rice becomes performance. In a mountain village in Hiroshima, on the first Sunday of June, oxen adorned with brightly colored saddles till a flooded paddy while flutes, drums, and bamboo clappers keep time. Women in indigo kimono and woven hats line up shoulder to shoulder and set the seedlings in rows. The tradition reaches back to the medieval era, a rite to pray for a good harvest and a way of turning hard labor into festivity through song. The sight of dozens of decorated oxen wading into the mud, flowers swaying on their backs, makes the field look like a garden. In an age of machines, people and animals plant by hand and hoof, not for efficiency but out of respect for the land and the season. A UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.