Festivals

With more than 300 years of history, the Kishiwada Danjiri Matsuri is the oldest Danjiri Festival in Japan. Such festivals are held right throughout the country, but for most Japanese, if you say ‘Danjiri Matsuri’ this is the one, with its raucousness and inherent danger, that springs to mind. The Harvest Festival Believed to have its origins in Kyoto’s Fushimi Inari Matsuri of 1703, at which the then daimyo of Kishiwada, Okabe Nagayasu, prayed for a good harvest for his domain, the festival is split into two distinct festivals, one in September and another in October. Despite it having fewer danjiri, it is the former that is the most famous and celebrated A danjiri is an elaborately-carved traditional Japanese wooden float, decorated with a number of exquisite ornaments weighing in at around four tons. Every September the working-class castle town of Kishiwada, an hour outside of Osaka, sees 34 of these immense danjiri dragged through the streets in order to pray for the local harvest of rice, wheat and soybeans. Fast, Furious and Dangerous Each of the danjiri represents one of the town’s neighborhoods, and the locals manually pull them along at breakneck speed, showcasing their area’s artistry. But it’s…