月: 2024年11月

This event is held at the tide-off festival of Chinju Jinsaki Shrine in the Kamezaki district in the north of Handa City, located on the northeast side of the Chita Peninsula, and five groups of parishioners bring out floats carrying mechanical puppets and pull them around. The floats are two-tiered and called Chita-gata. The five groups each have a daisanmoto (a representative for each group) who takes turns each year in charge of the overall execution and supervision of the event, and each group has a kurumamoto (a person with a high honor who is said to provide the group’s expenses) who is responsible for managing the floats.

The Sunari Festival is the annual festival of Tomiyoshi Takehaya Shrine and Yatsurugi Shrine in Sunari, Kanie Town, and is a festival that has been handed down through the ages in the context of Tenno faith, which prays for the elimination of epidemics. The festival takes place over a period of about three months from early July, and is comprised of two main events: the parade of colorful charagura boats, and the sacred reed nagashi, in which the year’s impurities are entrusted to reed plants and released down the river.

The Toride Shrine Whaling Boat Event is an event in which four lavishly decorated whaling boats are pulled out by four groups from the Tomita area. After a fire-extinguishing ceremony at Toride Shrine on the morning of the 14th, the whaling boats are paraded through the town. In the afternoon of the 15th, a parade is held in the shrine grounds, where participants perform acts such as spotting and chasing a whale, a whale’s counterattack, and harpooning a whale, to celebrate new constructions, weddings, births, etc.

This event is held at Sugawara Shrine’s autumn festival, and involves a parade of seals, danjiri, and demon processions through the towns. In addition to the Mikoshi towns that are involved in the parade of the mikoshi, there are nine Danjiri towns that bring out the seals and danjiri, and four Oni towns that put out the Oni procession, and together the Danjiri towns and Oni towns are known as the Festival towns. On the 23rd, the seals and danjiri are pulled and decorated, and at night lanterns and snow caves are lit. On the 24th, there is the Ashi-soro ceremony, in which the danjiri parade through each town, and the Oni procession also parades down Sannomachi-suji. The 25th is the main festival, and following the parade of the mikoshi, the Oni procession, danjiri, and seals parade.

Kuwana Ishitori Festival Shaisyaevent is held for Kuwana Sosha Shrine, the main shrine of the old castle town of Kuwana, located in the center of Kuwana City. Floats called festival floats are brought out by the parishioners’ neighborhoods and pulled around to the sound of loud bells and drums. The event originally had the meaning of a summer purification ritual, where pure stones were taken to purify the festival grounds, and this has now become a festival. Currently, parishioners’ neighborhoods participate in the event in 11 groups.