🏮 Kanchu Misogi Matsuri

木古内町寒中みそぎ祭り

Kikonai, Hokkaido (Sao River Shrine) · Usually, 13–15 January

Traditional performing arts

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Rooms around Kikonai, Hokkaido fill up while the festival is on.

The Kikonai Town Midwinter Misogi Festival is held every year from January 13 to 15 in Kikonai, Kamiiso District, Hokkaido, and is a traditional event organized by the Kikonai Town Tourism Association. Centered on Saigawa Shrine and Misogi Beach, the festival site, participants enter the freezing sea to pray for a year of good harvests and good catches. The festival's origins date back to 1831, when the priest of Saigawa Shrine received a revelation to purify the sacred object and bathed in the waters of the Tsugaru Strait. Afterward, the village is said to have enjoyed good harvests and good catches, and since then young men called gyoshusha (ascetics) have carried on the ritual. Highlights are the cold-water training called mizugori on the 13th, and the seawater misogi at Misogi Beach on the 15th. The ascetics enter the sea while holding four sacred objects, Betto, Benzaiten, the Mountain God, and Inari, and purify themselves by splashing seawater on one another. At the Kikancho Misogi Festival held at the same time, local products are sold, performances of Misogi Taiko and Misogi Soran Fire Dance take place, and misogi soba and sacred sake are offered.