Tottori Shan-Shan Festival

The Tottori Shan-Shan Festival is a summer festival held in mid-August each year in Tottori City, Tottori Prefecture. Known for the "Shan-Shan umbrella dance," in which crowds of dancers parade together down the city's main streets holding vividly colored umbrellas fitted with bells, it is beloved as Tottori City's largest annual event.

The name "Shan-Shan" is said to derive from the cool sound—"shan shan"—made by the many bells attached to the umbrellas as they move with the dance. It is also said to play on the way the abundant waters of Tottori's famed hot springs, such as Yoshioka Onsen, gush forth with a "shan shan." It is a modern reconstruction of the "Inaba Umbrella Dance" long handed down in the Tottori region, reworked so that anyone can easily take part, and has developed as a festival of total citizen participation.

The festival's greatest highlight is the "mass umbrella dance," in which thousands of dancers present perfectly coordinated group dancing. The spectacle of colorful flower-umbrellas spreading across the entire main street, with the sound of bells and festival music resounding through the city, is magnificent, and its scale boasts one of the largest umbrella dances in the country. The splendid wave of light woven by handmade flower-umbrellas captivates onlookers. Ardently coloring summer in Tottori, the Shan-Shan Festival is a dynamic modern summer festival nurtured by the hands of the citizens.