Hamaori-sai

The Hamaori-sai is a festival held every July on Marine Day at Nango Beach in Chigasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture. Also called the "festival of dawn," it is a spirited portable-shrine festival in which around 40 mikoshi from dozens of shrines in the Chigasaki and Samukawa areas gather together on the beach in the early morning—one of the representative summer festivals of the former Sagami Province.

The festival begins before dawn. Departing from their respective shrines, the mikoshi advance toward Nango Beach along dark pre-dawn roads, carried to the bearers' distinctive chant of "dokkoi, dokkoi." As the sky begins to lighten, the sight of the mikoshi assembling one after another to line up across the sandy beach is magnificent. After the Shinto rites, the mikoshi are carried one by one into the sea, where the "misogi" purification takes place as they jostle amid the waves and spray. The cluster of mikoshi gleaming in the water under the morning sun is the festival's greatest spectacle.

There are various theories about the origins of the Hamaori-sai, but it carries the character of a mikoshi purification, an offering of gratitude to the sea, and a "gathering of the gods" in which the local shrines convene together. In 1978 it was designated an Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Kanagawa Prefecture. Unfolding on the Shōnan coast in the early morning of summer, this mikoshi festival vividly reflects the faith and communal bonds rooted in the seaside town of Chigasaki.