Japan's Water Festivals & River Rites

About this book

Japan's festivals are usually told by their noise. This book tells them by their water. A portable shrine is showered by a whole street of neighbours. A god crosses his parish in a lacquered boat. Priests draw water at two in the morning from a well it took ten days to arrive in — underground, from the sea. A village dances in a dry field until the sky relents, and a hundred people in white stand under a waterfall in January and come out calling themselves reborn.

Japan's Water Festivals & River Rites is the complete guide to that water culture: 200 entries in eight parts — the splashing festivals of Fukagawa, Hakata and a hundred summer streets; the river processions and spirit boats; the sacred waters, drawn, sent and carried; the rain prayers of the shrines and the dragon ponds; the shared water of the rice fields, its weirs, wheels and water elders; the sea's parishes of ports, fleets and tides; the purifications, from the gate basin to the ice water of the north; and the water at work and play, in paper valleys, indigo vats, swimming schools and noodle streams.

Every entry gives the region, the place, the season in a typical year and the type of event, with a two-part account and a practical Good to Know note — all newly written for this book, and checked on 2026-11-05. A regional index and a glossary of water words complete the volume. The companion volume, Japan's Fire & Light Festivals, tells the other element's story.