Toka Ebisu at Imamiya Ebisu Shrine

Imamiya Ebisu Shrine is said to have been founded around 600, when Prince Shotoku built Shitenno-ji, and it has long been worshipped as the guardian of the city's markets. Toka Ebisu is the most important rite of its year. Over three days in January, people who run shops and businesses come to pray for a good year, and the call you hear across the grounds is "Shobai hanjo de sasa motte koi", roughly "for good business, bring the bamboo". The bamboo is the fukuzasa, a green branch to which visitors tie small charms such as gold coins and sea bream. The branches are handed out by fukumusume, young women chosen by the shrine for the festival. On the 10th the Hoekago procession comes to the shrine. It began with the geisha of Minami travelling here in palanquins, and the shrine says it took its present form more than two hundred years ago; in the Meiji, Taisho and early Showa periods as many as a hundred palanquins took part. Today a local association runs it, not the shrine, and it sets off from the Dotonbori area of Minami. Fish market workers also bring a large sea bream as an offering, a custom now kept by the Kizu market.