A State Prayer, Now Open to Anyone

The prayer at the center of Oharae, known as the Nakatomi purification formula, is preserved in the same early codified body of court ritual law as many of Japan's other ancient state rites, and its wording is treated as unusually old and fixed even by the standards of Shinto liturgy, recited in essentially the same form at shrines nationwide rather than varying by locality the way many local festival customs do.

Historically, the removal of accumulated pollution and transgression the rite addresses was frequently performed by transferring it onto a substitute object, a katashiro, a simple paper or cloth figure the impurity was symbolically passed into before the object was set adrift on water, burned, or otherwise disposed of, a transfer that let the ritual specialist or the state address collective impurity without requiring every individual to be purified in person. What began as a court and priestly rite performed on behalf of the community has become, at most shrines today, an activity ordinary visitors take part in directly rather than merely receive the benefit of: a shrine will typically make paper katashiro available for any visitor to write their name on, rub against their own body to transfer their personal impurity into the figure, and hand back for the shrine to dispose of ritually, extending a form of participation once reserved for court ritual specialists to anyone willing to visit a shrine on the appointed days at the end of June and December.