Shimoniikawa-jinja Shrine holds a regular spring festival in the form of the Omi Kenketo Festival, during which the Long Knife ritual takes place. During the festival young people in old-style traditional dress use chopsticks and knives to cut up funazushi (a special type of sushi unique to the Lake Biwa area) and offer it up to the gods. This ritual began when the deity to whom the shrine is dedicated, one of the Emperor’s sons Toyokiiribikono-mikoto, was given some salted carp when he crossed to this location from the west of the lake, and the traditional funazushi of this land of the lake now continues this ritual today.