Fukuno Yotaka Matsuri福野夜高祭 · Fukuno Yotaka Matsuri

When it is held

The Fukuno Yotaka Festival (福野夜高祭, Fukuno Yotaka Matsuri) is the spring festival of Fukuno Shinmei-sha (福野神明社), held every year from May 1 to 3 in the Fukuno district of Nanto, Toyama Prefecture.

• May 1–2: Yoi-matsuri (宵祭). Towering lanterns are paraded through the streets from 6:30 pm until late at night.
• May 3: Hon-matsuri (本祭). The festival floats (曳山, hikiyama) and the shrine's mikoshi tour the town.

The lanterns

The festival's yotaka andon (夜高行燈) are lantern floats more than 6 m tall, made by the young men of seven neighborhoods: Shinmachi, Kamimachi, Nanatsuya, Yokomachi, Uramachi, Tatsumimachi and Okuramachi. Work on them begins around March each year. More than 20 lanterns, large and small, are carried through the streets to drums, flutes and the call "Yoiyasa, yoiyasa", and on May 1 a contest names the year's best lanterns.

The lantern fight

The climax is the hikiai (引き合い), a ritual fight that starts at about 11 pm on May 2. As lanterns from two neighborhoods pass each other in the narrow streets, young men riding on top of them tear at the rival lantern with their hands and feet, trying to smash it. Elsewhere, floats usually clash head-on; in Fukuno the fight is at close quarters, 5 to 6 m above the street. Local tradition holds that the wilder the fight, the more it pleases the gods and the better the harvest.

The fight is dangerous up close, and visitors are kept back. The lanterns gather on Kamimachi-dōri for the fight from around 10 pm, so arrive early if you want a good view.

May 3: floats and mikoshi

At 10 am the hikiyama and yatai of four neighborhood groups (Kamimachi and Nanatsuya, Shinmachi, Uramachi and Tatsumimachi, and Yokomachi) gather at the Ginkō Yotsukado crossroads for a ceremony and then head to the shrine; this part is cancelled in rain. From 1 pm the mikoshi sets out from Fukuno Shinmei-sha and the floats tour their neighborhoods. Sending out two kinds of float, lanterns and hikiyama, for the same welcoming of the gods is unusual in Japan.

History

The festival began in 1652. When Fukuno Shinmei-sha was built as a symbol of the town's recovery from a great fire, the townspeople went out at dusk carrying lanterns to welcome a share of the deity's spirit from Ise Jingū. In the late Edo period the neighborhoods competed to build ever larger and more ornate lanterns. The festival was interrupted in the turmoil after the Second World War and later revived.

Fukuno's festival is said to be the original of the yotaka festivals that spread to other areas. In 2017 it was listed as a "Future Heritage" (未来遺産) project by the National Federation of UNESCO Associations in Japan, a civic program that is separate from UNESCO's own heritage lists.

Getting there

The festival takes place in central Fukuno around the Ginkō Yotsukado crossroads, which is closed to cars during festival hours. The nearest station is Fukuno on the JR Jōhana Line.