Greater Tokyo · Tochigi · Kanuma

Kanuma Autumn Festival (Imamiya Shrine Festival)

鹿沼秋まつり(今宮神社祭)

The annual festival of Imamiya Shrine in Kanuma, Tochigi. Festival wagons covered all over in carving, likened to a moving Yōmeimon gate of Nikkō, are pulled through the town to festival music, and at crossroads they face each other in duels of drumming. Held every year on the Saturday and Sunday before Sports Day in October.

9–10 October 2027

342 days away

Every year, the 2nd Monday of October, minus 2 days, for 2 days

Future dates: 9 October 2027 · 7 October 2028 · 6 October 2029

Origin

In 1608, during a severe drought, the people of Kanuma gathered at Imamiya Shrine and prayed for rain for three days and nights, and a violent thunderstorm broke. The annual festival is said to have begun in gratitude for this. The wagons started out as simple stages for offering dances, but in the late Edo period, when plays and dancing came under strict control, carving took their place, and with the hand of carvers from Nikkō they became the carved wagons seen today; one has records of being built in 1814. The wagon rite was designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 2003, and in 2016 it was inscribed on UNESCO’s intangible heritage list as one of the yama, hoko, yatai float festivals.

What to look for

On the first day, Saturday, the carved wagons pass one after another through the torii into the grounds of Imamiya Shrine and gather there. Built to the width of the approach, they are hauled past the eaves of houses with barely an inch to spare; at the signal of the host neighbourhood the music changes, and each wagon enters the grounds, faces the main hall and plays its offering. At dusk the lanterns are lit and the wagons head back out into town, and at crossroads two or more face each other in the buttsuke, a fierce duel of festival music. On the second day, Sunday, the wagons set out in their groups and converge on Kobanomiya-dōri. Each rides on four wheels under a gabled roof, its black lacquer or plain wood set thick with carvings of dragons, flowers and birds.

How to watch

The carved wagons are offerings to the annual festival of Imamiya Shrine; the shrine’s neighbourhoods are divided into four groups that take turns to host and run each year’s festival. In the buttsuke the musicians compete to keep their rhythm against each other, while the crowd around them urges them on with lanterns and cheers. The wagons go out in rain too: in 2025 the first day was rainy, and 26 wagons still made their way into the shrine and back out. Take your rubbish home.

If you go

If you go, go on the first day, Saturday, from the arrival at the shrine in the early afternoon to the departure and the duels at dusk. The festival fills the area around Imamiya Shrine, the old Reiheishi Kaidō road and Kobanomiya-dōri, ten minutes’ walk from Shin-Kanuma Station on the Tōbu Nikkō Line or twenty from Kanuma Station on the JR Nikkō Line. Roads in the centre are closed on both days, and temporary shuttle buses run. There are paid seats, including in front of the shrine’s torii.

Where

Imamiya Shrine and central Kanuma (Reiheishi Kaidō and Kobanomiya-dōri)

Kanuma, Tochigi

Open in maps

Sources

← All festivals