🏮 Nabekaburi Matsuri

鍋冠まつり

Maibara, Shiga (Chikuma Shrine) · Every year on 3 May

Mikoshi

231 days to go
Rooms around Maibara, Shiga fill up while the festival is on.

The Nabekaburi Matsuri (Pot-Wearing Festival) is held every year on the afternoon of May 3 at Chikuma Shrine in Maibara City, Shiga Prefecture, as the shrine's spring annual festival. Eight girls in their eighth year by traditional counting, dressed in kariginu (hunting robes) and wearing paper-mache pots on their heads, perform a procession with a retinue of about 200 people. Known as a curious festival, it is counted among Japan's three great curious festivals and is also designated an intangible folk cultural property of Maibara City. There are various theories about the festival's origin, but it is thought that its original form may have arisen from the fact that the deity of Chikuma Shrine was a god of food, and that from the local mikuriya (offering estate) crops and seafood were offered before the deity along with pots, a local specialty, presented as ransom offerings. The main schedule on the day: preparations are open to view at around 12:00 at the Chikuma Hasunuma Hall, and the procession departs Chikuma's otabisho (temporary resting place) at around 14:00. At around 15:30 it proceeds to the main hall of Chikuma Shrine. Access is convenient: about 5 minutes by taxi or about 10 minutes by rental bicycle from the west exit of JR Maibara Station.