🏮 Teppo Matsuri

鉄砲祭り

Ogano, Saitama (Hachiman Shrine) · Every year on the 2nd Saturday of December

MikoshiTraditional performing arts

89 days to go
Rooms around Ogano, Saitama fill up while the festival is on.

The Teppo Matsuri (Gun Festival) at Iida Hachiman Shrine in Ogano, Saitama Prefecture, is the common name for the shrine's annual grand festival. Held every year on the second Sunday of December and the day before, it is known as the closing festival of the Chichibu region's festival year and is a Saitama Prefecture-designated intangible folk cultural property. Its origin is said to date back to the Edo period, but no records remain, and traditions tell of it beginning as a prayer for good harvests to quell damage by deer and wild boar, or as test firing by hunters. The daimyo procession, in which the lord of Kami-Iida village, Furuta Daizen, is said to have formed a parade and paid homage around the Genbun era (around 1740), is still carried on today as an event on the second day. The highlight is the second day's Otachi Shinji (gunfire offering). Archers in ancient-style costumes fire long matchlock guns in unison along the approach, and amid the roar, two sacred horses run up the stone steps of the shrine building. It is a rare ritual nationwide in which the firing itself serves as the offering. On the eve of the festival, Ogano Kabuki is performed, and by custom, plays featuring the Genji are not performed, as the tradition derives from the Harima clan of the Taira side. After Otachi, the Kawase Shinji is held with the Harima mikoshi (portable shrine), carried only by the Harima faction, bringing the festival to a solemn close.