🏮 Soga no Kasayaki Matsuri

曽我の傘焼まつり

Odawara, Kanagawa (Jozanji Temple) · Every year on 25 May

Traditional performing arts

253 days to go
Rooms around Odawara, Kanagawa fill up while the festival is on.

The Soga no Kasayaki Matsuri (Soga Umbrella-Burning Festival) is held in the Soga district of Odawara City, Kanagawa Prefecture, and is a traditional event selected for the "Kanagawa no Matsuri 50-sen" list. It is organized by the Soga Brothers Ruins Preservation Society and takes place at multiple locations in the city, including the Ume no Sato Center, Soga Shrine, and the citizens' gathering facility Fureai no Sato. The festival derives from the revenge of the Soga Brothers, known as one of Japan's three great vendettas. It commemorates the story that when the Soga brothers Juro and Goro set out to avenge their father, they burned umbrellas as torches, and it has been carefully passed down in the Soga area for over eight hundred years. On the day, there is a performance of "Soga Monogatari: The Departure of Juro and Goro" by the Sagami Ningyo Shibai Shimonaka-za, a nationally designated Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property, as well as a torch procession from Soga Shrine to the Ume no Sato Center. In the climactic umbrella-burning ritual, prayer umbrellas inscribed with wishes are purified and then burned, offering prayers in honor of the brothers' fulfillment of their great wish.