🏮 Matsue To Gyoretsu

松江鼕行列

Matsue, Shimane (Matsue Castle Otemae) · Every year on the 3rd Sunday of October

Floats

34 days to go
Rooms around Matsue, Shimane fill up while the festival is on.

The Matsue Dōgyōretsu, held every year in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture, on the third Sunday of October as part of the Matsue Festival, is the annual grand festival of Matsue Shrine and a traditional celebration of the founding of Matsue as a castle town. Each neighborhood decorates a float called a dōgū with lanterns and curtains, loads two or three large drums called dō, from four to six shaku in size, onto it, and children in matching happi coats pull the ropes while parading to the music of flutes and changara accompaniment. The festival originated in the Heian-period Kyoto event known as Sagichō, and in Matsue it was passed down as a New Year rite called the tondo event. It is said that in 1724 (Kyōhō 9), townspeople competed in beating the dō in celebration of Princess Iwahime, the second wife of the fifth lord Matsudaira Yoshimasa, and that it developed into a full-scale event on the occasion of the Taishō Emperor's enthronement. The parade of dōgū floats, each devised with its own ingenuity by the neighborhoods, and the sound of the drums shaking the earth have become a quintessential autumn sight in Matsue.