Aichi Prefecture has the most festival floats of any area in Japan. The regions long history and deep culture has lead to it being recognized nationwide for providing some of the best traditional festivals, especially with floats featuring the ancient mechanical puppets known as Karakuri Ningyo.
Five floats fill the streets of Tokai City, followed by huge lively crowds. The festival’s highlight is watching the teams vie for honor and prestige by lifting and smoothly rotating their multi-ton floats without dropping them, or bumping the other floats.
The Nagoya Festival pays tribute to the Three Unifiers of Japan, all local samurai heroes, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu with a fantastic samurai parade. The festival incorporates Nagoya’s three biggest traditional festivals, the Toshogu, Wakamiya, and the San-no-Maru Festivals along with nine huge floats and Karakuri mechanical doll performances through the city streets.
See and feel history come alive as the colorful traditional Dashi Floats rumble along the ancient Tokaido running through the center of Arimatsu. The floats, and the charming old shops, homes and warehouses of Arimatsu create a tapestry of times gone by.
See the magnificent Yama floats carried through the streets between Gamagori’s two major shrines to the accompaniment of festival music and the chants of the loincloth-clad men who bear them, before plunging into the clear blue ocean off Gamagori!
Sixteen stunning festival floats adorned with Karakuri mechanical dolls make their way through the town under October skies. The amazing dolls perform tricks, write messages, act out scenes, and keep the crowds entertained. At night, the floats are decorated with lanterns and again parade through the town in this over 300 year-old festival.
