🏮 Bonden Matsuri

ぼんでん祭り

Sumida, Tokyo (Shirahige Shrine) · Every year on 5 May

233 days to go
Rooms around Sumida, Tokyo fill up while the festival is on.

The Shirahige Shrine Bonten Festival is a traditional event held every year on May 5 at Shirahige Shrine in Sumida Ward, Tokyo. Passed down through generations of local caretakers, this festival is also called Shizume Matsuri, a rite held to pray for a good harvest by protecting the rice flowers from damage by wind and water. On the day, shrine parishioners' caretakers gather at the shrine from early morning and carefully prepare the gohei (bonten). After offering the completed gohei before the deities and holding a ceremony, they move to the banks of the Sumida River, where a ritual is performed to pray that water-related disasters such as floods and droughts will not occur. In the "Honbonten," a boat decorated with five-colored gohei is sent out onto the Sumida River, and a sacred rite is also held in which young people leap into the river to purify body and mind. In recent years, with the new scenery of Tokyo Skytree visible in the background, it continues as a valuable event that conveys the history of Shirahige Shrine to the present.