The Enburi festival, which heralds spring, began in the Hachinohe region of Aomori Prefecture during the Meiji era. The festival’s core purpose is to pray to the gods for a good harvest, and during a "ta-asobi" (rice field play), dancers called tayu wear horse-head eboshi hats and dance with large head-shaking movements. Thrusting and rubbing sticks called janggi, they seek to awaken the gods of the fields that have been sleeping during the winter and to put their souls into the rice fields. The eboshi hats are painstakingly decorated with auspicious designs such as cranes, turtles, pine trees, and bamboo. It is said that when the tayu dance with complete concentration, the gods reside in the eboshi hat.