Ryōbu Shintō is best understood not as a tradition with its own separate festival calendar, but as a way of reading and performing existing Shintō and Buddhist observances through a shared, syncretic lens. Rather than establishing distinct holidays with unique names and dates, it takes the familiar rhythm of Shintō matsuri and Buddhist temple rites and weaves them together into a single ritual fabric. New Year celebrations, seasonal agricultural rites, and local shrine festivals proceed according to the customary patterns, yet their meaning and ritual content are expanded to embrace both kami and buddhas. In this sense, the distinctiveness of Ryōbu Shintō lies less in “what” is celebrated and more in “how” these celebrations are understood and enacted.

Major annual observances such as New Year, Setsubun, and the equinoctial Higan become occasions where Shintō purification and offerings coexist with Buddhist prayers, sutra recitation, and other temple-based practices. New Year rites, for example, may invoke both kami and buddhas or bodhisattvas for protection and renewal, while Setsubun’s bean‑throwing to expel misfortune can be accompanied by explicitly Buddhist elements. Similarly, the ancestral focus of Buddhist observances like Obon or Higan readily harmonizes with Shintō forms of ancestor and kami veneration, allowing the same festival to be experienced as a joint act of devotion across both religious vocabularies.

Seasonal and agricultural festivals offer another clear window into this syncretic style. Traditional Shintō rites for rice planting, harvest, and the turning of the seasons continue as before, yet the fields, harvests, and natural cycles are interpreted simultaneously as the domain of local kami and as manifestations of cosmic buddhas. In such contexts, blessings for fertility and protection may be accompanied by Buddhist liturgy, and fire rituals such as goma can be timed to coincide with shrine festivals, their benefits explicitly directed to both kami and sentient beings. The outward form remains recognizable as standard matsuri, while the inner doctrinal reading is deeply Ryōbu.

This blending is especially evident in shrine–temple complexes, where the physical proximity of shrine and temple structures mirrors the theological union of kami and buddhas. Festival days at such sites often combine Shintō processions, mikoshi, and offerings with Buddhist chanting, memorial services, and esoteric rites, sometimes framed around specific pairings of Buddhist deities and their kami counterparts. Over time, these practices came to feel like a single, integrated ceremonial life, even though they were never labeled as a separate class of “Ryōbu Shintō festivals.” Later historical efforts to separate kami and buddhas obscured many of these syncretic layers, yet the underlying pattern remains: Ryōbu Shintō expresses itself through shared festivals, reinterpreted rather than reinvented.