🏮

🏮 Shirakawa Daruma Ichi

白河だるま市

Shirakawa, Fukushima (Shirakawa Station Area) · Every year on 11 February

Food stalls

150 days to go
Rooms around Shirakawa, Fukushima fill up while the festival is on.

The Shirakawa Daruma Market, held on February 11 in Shirakawa, Fukushima Prefecture, is a traditional event heralding the arrival of spring. Centered on the area in front of Shirakawa Station, stalls selling daruma and food and drink line about 1.5 kilometers of the city's main street. The origin of the Shirakawa daruma dates back to Matsudaira Sadanobu, lord of the Shirakawa domain, who ordered his retained painter Tani Buncho to design and color it. The market held to pray for the prosperity of the castle town is said to be the beginning of this daruma market. Even today, two shops — Shirakawa Daruma Sohonpo (Watanabe Daruma Shop) and Sagawa Daruma Seisakusho — make Shirakawa daruma with traditional techniques. They are auspicious objects with a rounded, gentle expression, featuring a crane on the eyebrows, a turtle on the mustache, and pine, bamboo, and plum on the face. They come in 18 sizes, and the custom of buying progressively larger ones, starting from a small one, is also known.