Fukagawa Matsuri

The Fukagawa Matsuri is a festival held at Tomioka Hachiman Shrine in Kōtō Ward, Tokyo, counted together with the Kanda Festival and Sannō Festival as one of the "three great festivals of Edo." Boasting around 380 years of history with origins said to date to 1642, it is known by the alias "water-throwing festival"—a spirited summer festival representative of the downtown of old Edo. The main festival is held grandly in mid-August once every three years.

The festival's greatest distinction is, as its name suggests, the "water-throwing," in which large amounts of water are doused from the roadsides onto the bearers and portable shrines. The sight of spectators vigorously throwing water with buckets, tubs, and hoses onto the mikoshi advancing to the chant of "wasshoi, wasshoi" is full of an exhilaration that dispels the midsummer heat. The scene of bearers and spectators uniting and reveling while drenched in spray is a charm unique to the Fukagawa Matsuri, not seen at other festivals.

The greatest highlight of the main festival is the "mikoshi united procession," in which more than 50 portable shrines from the various neighborhood associations process together in a line. The sight of dazzling large mikoshi parading one after another, touring the town while being doused with purifying water, is magnificent, and its scale and fervor are overwhelming. Tomioka Hachiman Shrine is an ancient shrine that has commanded the faith of common people as one of the largest Hachiman shrines in Edo, and the Fukagawa Matsuri is a major festival representative of Tokyo's summer, conveying to this day the vitality and human warmth rooted in its temple-gate town of Fukagawa.