Matsuri of Central Japan

About this book

Central Japan is where Japan's crowds, capitals and sacred mountains stand within a few hours of each other — and its festival calendar is the densest on earth. Two hundred festivals of Kanto, Chubu and Kansai, and nowhere else, in one uniform, practical format: 70 from Kanto, 70 from Chubu and 60 from Kansai. Every entry gives the typical window, the place, the festival inside the life of its land, and how to plan around it.

The giants are here — Kanda and Sanja in Tokyo, Gion's great floats and the silent Aoi procession in Kyoto, Tenjin's river court in Osaka, a thousand armoured marchers for Lord Shingen, the once-in-six-years terror of the Onbashira log-riding. But this book goes where the "best festivals" lists stop: a kite war fought across a river for three hundred years, the world's largest firework shell fired as a named prayer in a town of five thousand, a national goldfish-scooping championship, monks racing to cut serpent-bamboo on a mountain, thirty nights of open-circle dancing in a water town, and a castle town's children performing kabuki from moving stages. Every window is given honestly as the typical year, and every entry carries its check date — because central Japan's festivals move with typhoons, harvests and six-year cycles, and a good guide says so.

Second volume of the regional deep-dive series, companion to Matsuri: The Complete Guide to 500 Japanese Festivals (the nationwide doorway, organised by month) and Matsuri of the North (Tohoku & Hokkaido). Where a festival appears in more than one volume, it is written here from the land and the life around it, never copied across.