Japan:AkitaKantoFestival(JP189

The Akita Kanto is a Japanese festival celebrated from 3 - 7 August in Akita City, Akita Prefecture in hope for a good harvest. Around two hundred bamboo poles five to twelve metres long, bearing twenty-four or forty-six lanterns, topped with gohei, and weighing up to fifty kilograms, are carried through the streets by night on the palms, foreheads, shoulders, or lower backs of the celebrants.The festival is first referred to in a travel diary of 1789. The Road Where the Snow Falls. It is one of the main festivals in Tohoku, along with the Tanabata festival in Sendai, the Aomori Nebuta Matsuri festival, and the Hanagasa Matsuri festival in Yamagata. The Akita Kanto festival was designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1980.