🏮 Daruma Kuyo

だるま供養

Adachi, Tokyo (Nishiarai Daishi) · Every year on 3 February

Food stalls

142 days to go
Rooms around Adachi, Tokyo fill up while the festival is on.

At Nishiarai Daishi in Adachi Ward, Tokyo, a daruma memorial service is held on Setsubun. Founded in the third year of Tencho, the temple has continued this event since 1954. It is a traditional practice in which people buy new daruma to replace the ones they have displayed for a year, praying for household safety and business prosperity, and the old daruma are collected and burned that day in a memorial rite. The centerpiece of the solemn ceremony takes place in front of tens of thousands of daruma piled up in the garden of Komyo-den, where mountain ascetics blowing conch shells and monks chant sutras as the fire is lit. Bean-throwing is also held at the main hall, and along the approach a daruma market is set up; the rows of souvenir and dumpling shops are another part of the experience.