A mikoshi being carried down Nakamise Dori
The next Sanja Matsuri is scheduled for May 16 to 18, 2014
The Sanja Matsuri (Sanja Festival) is an annual festival in the Asakusa district that takes place over the third full weekend in May. It is held in celebration of the three founders of Sensoji Temple, who are enshrined as Shinto gods (kami) in Asakusa Shrine next door to the temple. Nearly two million people visit Asakusa over the three days of the festival, making it one of the three biggest festivals in Tokyo, together with the Kanda Matsuri and the Sanno Matsuri.
The Sanja Matsuri features about one hundred mikoshi, portable shrines, in which Shinto gods (kami) are symbolically placed into and paraded about the streets to bring good fortune to the local businesses and residents. Smaller neighborhood mikoshi can be seen about the streets of Asakusa throughout the festival, while the focus of the festival, the three large mikoshi belonging to Asakusa Shrine, make their appearance on Sunday. For the entirety of the festival, Asakusa is packed with food stalls, festival games and revelers amid a lively atmosphere of Japanese drums and flutes.
Daigyoretsu Parade
The festivities begin on Friday afternoon with the Daigyoretsu Parade, a large procession of priests, city officials, geisha, musicians and dancers wearing Edo Period costumes. They proceed along Yanagi Dori to Sensoji Temple and Asakusa Shrine. A Shinto ceremony is held immediately after the parade, followed by a traditional dance to pray for an abundant harvest and prosperity. In the afternoon the first of the portable shrines (mikoshi) of Asakusa's local neighborhoods are brought out and carried through the streets, accompanied by musicians playing Japanese drums and flutes.
Saturday features the neighborhood mikoshi, nearly 100 of them from the district's 44 neighborhoods, which are brought out around noon and carried to Sensoji Temple and Asakusa Shrine to be blessed before they are carried back to be paraded around their neighborhoods to spread luck and prosperity. Many neighborhoods also have smaller children's mikoshi as well as women's mikoshi.
A neighborhood mikoshi at Kaminarimon Gate
The events of Sunday, the final day of the festival, begin at 6:00 AM when hundreds of revelers, grouped by their neighborhoods and wearing matching festival garbs, gather at Asakusa Shrine and vie to carry one of the three large main mikoshi (portable shrines). The groups are very competitive as they jostle to carry the mikoshi. Consequently, spectators are not allowed beyond Sensoji's entrance gates during this part of the festival due to space and safety concerns.
After about two hours the mikoshi head off in different directions to be paraded through the district. By the end of the evening, they will have visited all of the streets, shopping arcades and neighborhoods of Asakusa before returning to Asakusa Shrine.
One of the three main mikoshi is paraded through a shopping arcade
|
