Hōfu Tenmangū Gojinkō-sai (Hadakabō Festival)

防府天満宮御神幸祭(裸坊祭)

The most important festival of Hōfu Tenmangū in Hōfu, Yamaguchi, held for more than a thousand years. Some 5,000 men in white, the hadakabō, shout “Kyōdai wasshoi!” as they send a 500-kilogram palanquin sliding down the shrine’s great stone stairway and escort it to Katsuma-no-ura, the old harbour linked to Sugawara no Michizane, and back. Held every year on the fourth Saturday of November, with the closing day on the Sunday after.

28–29 November 2026

27 days away

Every year, the 4th Saturday of November, for 2 days

Future dates: 28 November 2026 · 27 November 2027 · 25 November 2028

Origin

In 901 Sugawara no Michizane, falsely accused and sent into exile at Dazaifu, put in at Katsuma-no-ura here, his last port of call on Honshū. Since this land was still joined to the capital where the emperor lived, he wished to stay and wait here for word that his name had been cleared. After he died at Dazaifu in 903, the provincial governor of Suō built a shrine for him the following year here at Matsuzaki, as he had wished. This was the beginning of Hōfu Tenmangū, which the shrine describes as the first Tenmangū in Japan. In 1004 an envoy of Emperor Ichijō was sent to Hōfu, and for the first time the emperor declared Michizane innocent. The Gojinkō-sai traces its origin to that envoy’s rite and has been handed down as the festival that each year brings Michizane’s spirit the news of his innocence. At first only the shrine’s officiants and a few families could take part, but as devotion to Tenjin grew in the late Edo period, ordinary people were allowed to join if they proved themselves pure. They purified themselves in the cold water of the Saba River and served just as they were, which is why they came to be called hadakabō, “naked monks”, and the festival the Hadakabō Matsuri.

What to look for

At 6 p.m. the doors at the front of the hall of worship open, several hundred hadakabō surge inside at once, and the 500-kilogram palanquin, the oajiro-koshi, comes sliding down the great stone stairway in front of the shrine with a rumble you can feel underfoot. The precincts erupt with cries of “Kyōdai wasshoi!” as the lead portable shrine and the next are carried out one after another, each surrounded by as many as a thousand men. With some 5,000 hadakabō swirling together, it is known as one of the roughest festivals in western Japan. At the foot of the steps the palanquin is set on a carriage and joins the procession to the resting place on the shore at Katsuma-no-ura, about 2.5 kilometres away. There, following the envoy’s rite of 1004, Michizane is told once more of his innocence, and the procession returns through the town to the shrine at around 9 p.m. The shrine particularly asks people to see this return, when the palanquin is hauled at a run back up the great stairway on its ropes.

How to watch

This is a Shinto rite of Hōfu Tenmangū, and the hadakabō are ordinary people serving in white. To take part as one, apply to the shrine. After the festival the palanquin is placed in the cloister, and passing beneath it, the oajiro-kuguri, is said to bring Tenjin’s protection. You can do so from just after the palanquin returns until 8 p.m. the following day.

If you go

If you go, be there on the Saturday for the 6 p.m. departure, when the palanquin slides down the great stairway, and for its return at night. Hōfu Tenmangū is about 15 minutes on foot from Hōfu Station on the JR San’yō Line, or take a bus from the station’s Tenjin-guchi exit to the Hōfu Tenmangū stop and walk 3 minutes. Roads are closed to traffic on the festival day. On the Sunday, the closing day, the Tenjin women’s portable shrine is carried through the town by some 200 women, accompanied by a band of local schoolchildren playing festival music.

Where

Hōfu Tenmangū and central Hōfu (Katsuma-no-ura)

Hōfu, Yamaguchi

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Sources

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