Sanja Matsuri

File:Mikoshi during Sanja Matsuri in 2006.jpg

Mikoshi parading through the streets during Sanja Matsuri.

File:Music Float during Sanja Matsuri.jpg

Musical float parading through Asakusa during Sanja Matsuri.

The Sanja Festival (三社祭, Sanja Matsuri) is one of the "Three Great Festivals of Edo" (present day Tokyo), along with the Kanda Festival and Sanno Festival, and is known as one of the wildest. It is held on the third weekend of every May at Asakusa Shrine. Over its three days, the festival attracts anywhere from 1.5 to 2 million people every year.

Although appearing to date from older times, the present day festival was established in the Edo Period. The festival begins on Friday with a famous grand procession called the Daigyoretsu, an exciting event that energizes the whole community with traditional musicians, performers and dancers that parade around downtown Asakusa. During the next two days of the festival, about a hundred mikoshi (portable shrine) are paraded through the streets, and the procession of three specific mikoshi owned by the shrine begin early Sunday morning. These three elaborate shrines represent the three men responsible for founding Asakusa Shrine - Hinokuma Hamanari and Hinokuma Takenari and Haji no Nakatomo. On Sunday, the last day of the festival, these three main mikoshi are divided into three different groups in order to visit and bestow blessing to all 44 blocks of downtown and residential Asakusa. When evening falls, the three shrines find their way back to Asakusa Shrine in another grand procession.

While the festival is highly religious in its origins, it is primarily a festival of celebration. For this reason, the atmosphere around Asakusa during the weekend of the festival is charged and energetic. The streets are almost continuously flooded with people and drums, flutes, whistles and chanting can be heard echoing throughout the district. In the areas immediately surrounding the Shrine's mikoshis, the scene is even more hectic. It is not unusual for there to be someone standing on the bucking and swaying mikishi who seemingly conducts the people carrying him and the shrine, all while shouting to the hundreds of people watching the spectacle. In addition to these parades, festival goers can also visit hundreds of shops and food stands which are erected in the area around the Shrine.

See also

• Culture of Japan
• Japanese calendar
• Japanese festivals