Fukagawa Hachiman Festival

It is one of the Tokyo's Big 3 festivals (the other two are the Sanno Festival and the Kanda Festival). This is certainly the wettest and the wildest of Japanese festivals.

It is nicknamed as "water- throwing festival," attracts over a half- million viewers and some 30,000 participants.

The annual grand festival at Tomioka Hachimangu Shrine is commonly called Fukagawa Hachiman Matsuri (festival) and has been popular since the Edo period.

The festival reaches its highlight as onlookers lavishly throw water to the mikoshi (portable shrine) and its carriers who continue manly calls as they parade through the local area.

It falls once in a year onto the "gohonsha matsuri" year. The shrine's second main mikoshi called "ninomiya mikoshi" is taken out for the parade. The mikoshi was newly built and presented to the public for the first time in 1997.

The participants carried by them are wet with water thrown from buckets and hoses by the bystanders along the eight- kilometer route.

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Contact Information

Fukagawa Hachiman Festival
Tomioka Hachiman-gu Shrine, Koto-ku
135-0048 Tokyo

Tel. +81332013331

http://www.tomiokahachimangu.or.jp