Sagicho Matsuri

The Sagicho matsuri is a lot of fun.It’s held on a weekend in the middle of march. During the first day (Saturday) they will parade floats (called Sagicho) made of Wood, Bamboo and straw, decorated with the Chinese zodiac sign of the year through the town. On the second day (Sunday) is where the highlight of the festival happens. In the afternoon the floats are used to fight each other and hopefully flip over the other sagicho float. All of the floats usually take a bit of damage during this wrangle, but that doesn’t really matter because later in the evening all of the floats are getting burned anyway.

There is another festival at the same shrine in middle of April (the Hachiman matsuri) involving fire. The Sagicho festival was actually a response to that one. Newcomers to the area back in the 16th century were so impressed by that Hachiman festival that they decided to organize an even more impressive one and hence the Sagicho festival was born.

Quite a lot of the men in this festival were wearing make-up. I found this a bit strange, but doing a bit of research i was reading about the warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) who was one of the founder of this festival. He was said to wear make-up and dance during the Sagicho festival celebration. This seems to have been tradition during that period, there are also a lot of other famous Japanese historical figures known to wear make-up.

Transport: Close to Obatacho-Shiryokan-mae bus stop on the Chomyo-ji bus route from Omihachiman Station. Omihachiman Station is on the JR Biwako Line from Kyoto Station.

Website:  The Omihachiman city website has some information about the festival.