Women's Rite for Needles

The Women's Rite for Needles was a festival celebrated on the twenty-seventh day of the Dog. All the women of a household would kneel before the family shrine. The landlady placed a block of tofu on the shrine's shelf and one by one sticked in all the needles that had been bent or broken by use during the past year. She offered a prayer of thanksgiving to all the needles who sacrificed themselves in service to the household.