HOME > Japan’s Local Treasures > Celebrate Matsue’s Samurai Spirit and Heritage
Matsue City, Shimane Prefecture
Every year on the first Saturday of April, the city of Matsue in Shimane Prefecture celebrates its samurai warrior heritage with the annual Musha Gyoretsu Samurai Warrior Parade. This parade is held during the Matsue Castle spring festival period (spanning late March through early April) to coincide with the area’s cherry blossom season.
This event celebrates the founding of Matsue as a castle town in 1600, when Horio Yoshiharu, a general, feudal lord, and head of the Horio clan, decided to establish a castle on the shores of Lake Shinji. The parade re-enacts the symbolic entrance of the Horio clan to the newly finished castle.
Participants dress up as historic figures such as Horio Yoshiharu and move on foot through the streets while adorned in colorful samurai warrior armor and other period outfits. In addition to male and female warriors bearing an array of period weapons, there are also ladies in elegant kimonos and children playing traditional instruments, making the event a colorful and delightfully unusual spectacle.
The parade procession departs from Matsue Castle and proceeds through surrounding neighborhoods before returning to the castle entrance, where other festivities and performances take place.
AloJapan.com