Please come to Kumagaya!
Uchiwa-matsuri is a festival of the Yasaka Shrine located in this city.
In 1592 Yasaka Shrine Kyoto established a branch at Atago Shrine currently located in Kamakura-cho, Kumagaya.
The summer festival of Kumagaya has taken place since 1750. In 1830, a giant mikoshi (portable shrine) was newly built and mikoshitogyo was begun.
The name Uchiwa-matsuri comes from an episode when merchants started to offer their customers an uchiwa (Japanese fan) sometime around 1902, and people believed the best shopping was when Kumagaya Uchiwa-matsuri took place.
Around the same time, while the towns bustled with people due to growth of the silk industry, each neighborhood competitively purchased festival floats, which became an original model of the current Uchiwa-matsuri, featuring mikoshitogyo and a parade of festival floats and continues to this date.
Togyo-sai features a mikoshi parade from Atago Yasaka Shrine, the main shrine, through the downtown to the angu (a temporal palace) established at “Omatsuri-hiroba”.
A total of 100 young leaders in hakucho from each neighborhood start parading through to the angu carrying the mikoshi.
Festival floats from all neighborhoods head for Kumagaya Station and gather at Hoshikawa Street.
At dusk, a Matoi is waved before festival floats equipped with lit lanterns, and with the Presiding area’s float in the lead, they move to in front of Kumagaya station’s north entrance, to start Hatsu-tatakiai.
Led by the guuji and festival board members, a parade of festival floats starts from the intersection at Yagihashi Department Store through the National Route 17, which is vehicle-free in the afternoon.
Events are held at various places on the pedestrian-opened National Route 17.
Particularly at Community Square, visitors can experience Ohayashi, Japanese drumming.
At 6:00 PM, the Ohayashi performance reaches its climax as if its performers are reluctant to admit the festival is about to be over.
All 12 festival floats gather around Omatsuri-hiroba, which is the place the last performance is given. And finally, Nenban-okuri and Hikkawase-tatakiai are performed.
Kangyo-sai is a parade that is held to return the Mikoshi from the angu to the main shrine. About 300 members of Kumagaya Gion-kai carry the Mikoshi to the main shrine at midnight.
At 2:00 AM, all of the events of the festival that have been held for three days finally end.
