🏮 Daradara Matsuri

だらだら祭

Minato, Tokyo (Shiba Daijingu Shrine) · Every year on 11 September

MikoshiTraditional performing artsFood stalls

362 days to go
Rooms around Minato, Tokyo fill up while the festival is on.

The Daradara Festival is the annual grand festival held at Shiba Daijingu Shrine in Minato Ward, Tokyo, in mid-September. The shrine is a 2-minute walk from Daimon Station on the Toei Oedo Line and the Asakusa Line, and is known as the most famous branch shrine of Ise Jingu in Edo. The festival is popularly known by this nickname because its rites drag on (daradara) for about ten days. Originally the festival was held on a single day, but it is thought that during the Edo period, when pilgrimages to Ise became popular, the period gradually grew longer as the number of visitors during the autumn festival season increased. It was once also called the Ginger Festival or the Mekkachi Festival, after the ginger sold in the shrine grounds; this is thought to derive from the old custom of offering ginger harvested locally as a food offering when the shrine was established. The main festival rites are fixed on September 16. In alternate years, roughly 20 town mikoshi (portable shrines) from the parishioners' neighborhood associations parade together, and at irregular intervals the shrine's own mikoshi tours the parishioners' area. Stalls line the approach, and a hokosha (palanquin) and lion heads are displayed, while chigibako boxes with soybeans inside are sold as lucky charms.