Chichibu Yomatsuri

A festival of the night

Chichibu Yomatsuri is the annual festival of Chichibu Shrine in the town of Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture. Yomatsuri means “night festival”: on the main day, 3 December, the floats move after dark, hung with lanterns, while fireworks light the winter sky. It is counted, with Kyoto’s Gion Matsuri and Takayama Matsuri, among Japan’s three great float festivals.

Six floats and a steep hill

Six floats take part: two kasaboko, with tall canopies, and four yatai. The yatai also serve as stages for kabuki. The climax is the haul up Dango-zaka, a steep slope where teams drag floats weighing as much as twenty tonnes up to the square above.

Both the floats and the festival itself are designated Important Folk Cultural Properties of Japan, tangible and intangible, and the festival is on UNESCO’s Representative List among the Yama, Hoko and Yatai float festivals.

A date that moved

Chichibu Shrine records that the festival was once held on the third day of the eleventh month of the old lunisolar calendar. Today it is fixed on 3 December — so if an older account gives a different day, that is why.