Drums are the stars of these Shintō festivals, where participants and spectators thrill to the beat.
Drums Set the Mood
Drums play varied roles in matsuri festivities. A single hearty stroke to start the event signals purification and announces to the deities that a festival has begun. Frenetic drumming can represent thunderclaps, a dragon ascending to the heavens, or a prayer for rain and a bountiful harvest. Endless rhythmical drumming is a hallmark of nenbutsu odori, dancing with chanting of nenbutsu prayers. Essential to Shintō rituals, drums are often the highlight of a matsuri. Here we present three colorful matsuri centered on taiko drums.
Morioka Sansa Odori
(August 1–4, Morioka, Iwate Prefecture)
The Sansa Odori parade is the biggest festival in Iwate Prefecture. (© Haga Library)
On the evening of August 1, the main street of Morioka, the Iwate prefectural capital, begins filling with dancers bearing large drums. It is the start of the Sansa Odori, where a total of 25,000 people participate in huge parades over four days.
Led by five young women in pink yukata, the drummers fill the wide main thoroughfare, raising their voices in a rhythmical chant. The impressive procession attracts crowds of more than one million people, who thrill to the beat of the drums. This parade is not just a present-day event for attracting tourists. It has its roots in an Edo period (1603–1868) legend about driving devils out.
The parade leaders practice for two months to perfect their dance. (© Haga Library)
Once upon a time, a demon raged through a village, and the inhabitants appealed to Mitsuishi Shrine for help in vanquishing it. The shrine deity tied the demon to the shrine’s three large boulders and had it leave a handprint there as a promise to stop harming the villagers. Rejoicing that the demon had been chased away, the villagers began singing sansa, sansa, as they danced, hence the name of the modern-day Sansa Odori.
Mitsuishi Shrine, the oldest in the city, is known for the “devil’s handprint” legend and as the origin of the prefecture name Iwate (literally rock-hand). (© Haga Library)
The sansa odori eventually merged with the bon odori—dances held to celebrate the midsummer Obon season, continuing over the years as a rite for expelling demons. Even today, the women leading the parade perform their first dance as an offering to Mitsuishi Shrine.
The June 2014 Sansa Odori, held as part of recovery efforts after the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011, drew 3,437 drummers. This won the event a listing in the Guinness World Records as the largest Japanese drum ensemble, making the Sansa Odori one of Japan’s best-known drum festivals.
A grand parade celebrated the Guinness World Records award. (© Haga Library)
Izaku Taiko Odori, Kagoshima
(August 28, Hioki, Kagoshima Prefecture)
The Izaku Taiko Odori is Japan’s most grueling drum festival. (© Haga Library)
The southern Kyūshū region of Kagoshima, ruled by the Shimazu clan in feudal times, saw continual unrest during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The many Kagoshima Prefecture festivals praying for or celebrating victory are a reminder of those turbulent days. One of them, the Izaku Taiko Odori, is the festival of Minamikata Shrine in Hioki. This taiko odori has its origins in a victory dance commemorating the successful defense of the clan’s domain against a rival in 1406.
Assistants help the drummers into their costumes. (© Haga Library)
On the morning of the festival, more than 20 drummers gather to don their all-white matsuri garb. With drums strapped to their chests and Satsumadori rooster feathers adorning their headpieces, they carry two-meter-long woven bamboo banners on their backs. Taken together, their festival accouterments weigh 20 kilograms.
Surrounded by the drummers and several singers, four performers wearing vividly colored kimono and sedge hats play small drums and ring gongs. There is a striking contrast between the vigor of the drummers, all adult males, and the innocence of the four young performers, who range in age from 6 to 15.
The young participants keep time to the beat. (© Haga Library)
The entourage offers its first dance at Minamikata Shrine, a site surrounded by tall cedars where the air is fresh and cool. But for the rest of the festival, the taiko odori is a feat of physical endurance.
The drummers begin their dance in perfectly coordinated movements. They raise their legs high in the air, swish their feathers from right to left, and wave their banners up and down, reminiscent of how the Shimazu clan defenders must have appeared to their adversaries in battle six hundred years ago. After energetically dancing under the punishing sun, the exhausted dancers pause during breaks in the music, fanned vigorously by their attendants.
In pouring rain or searing heat, the drummers keep on dancing. (© Haga Library)
The dancing goes on from morning to dusk, in 30-minute segments as the drummers and their entourage move from one place to another. The festival usually lasts two days; the dancing goes on all day, with the procession visiting over 30 places in the Izaku district over that time. Even if the drummers’ feet are covered in blisters, not even a downpour can stop them. After the final dance, the exhausted dancers muster their remaining reserves of strength to bow in thanks to the onlookers. This festival demands endurance, but it undeniably showcases the robustness and proud spirit of the Satsuma hayato, as the men from the region are called.
The dancers keep vigorously drumming and dancing right to the end. (© Haga Library)
Hida Furukawa Matsuri
(April 19–20, Hida, Gifu Prefecture)
The first day’s highlight is dynamic drumming. The second day features a parade of elaborately decorated floats. (© Haga Library)
In addition to performing music, drums can also be used to tell the time to signal the start of a matsuri or event. The Furukawa Matsuri in Hida, a city in northern Gifu Prefecture, is famous for its okoshidaiko “wake-up drum,” a practice passed down for nearly two hundred years. In the old days, thunderous drumming in the middle of the night announced the start of Ketawakamiya Shrine’s festival, to welcome the shrine’s deity and to wake up the village and summon parishioners to worship.
In the drum procession, bearers carry the huge drum, with two men astride and two others pounding out the matsuri rhythm. (© Haga Library)
In early evening on the first day, the huge drum, 80 centimeters across, is placed on a raised platform in the festival square in the heart of the city. Two young men, their midriffs wrapped in white cloth, sit tied to each other back-to-back astride the drum. As onlookers chant in celebration, the drummers raise their drumsticks and create a thunderous roar, the festival’s highlight.
Men scramble over each other to approach the okoshidaiko. (© Haga Library)
As the okoshidaiko is borne through the streets, parishioners from different neighborhoods approach, bearing smaller drums mounted on poles over three meters long and attempting to crash into the bearers to show local pride. The bearers push back, hundreds of men grappling and pushing for position. Some long drum-bearing poles are held upright, and men clamber up them to perform acrobatic stunts in a show of guts. The feverish jostling continues until late at night as the sound of the okoshidaiko reverberates through the air.
Festival participants perform an acrobatic “dragonfly” pose. (© Haga Library)
The second day features a stately procession of gorgeous floats belonging to the city’s various neighborhoods. Karakuri mechanical puppet plays and children’s kabuki are also performed during the festival. (© Haga Library)
(Originally published in Japanese on August 24, 2025. Dates given are those on which the festivals are usually held. Banner photo © Haga Library.)
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