Kyushu Festivals

Rituals honoring living creatures and stalls along the shrine approach mark this autumn festival.

Community dance groups fill central Kashima with music and summer celebrations.

A mikoshi procession travels through Tsuno during the shrine's summer festival.

Summer festivities spread through Beppu before fireworks illuminate the bay.

Tall decorated floats move to festival music and turn dramatically through the streets of Hamatama.

Gion floats and shrine processions travel through Nakatsu's old town.

A community-carried drum platform and street events bring summer festivities to Saito.

Fukuoka's high-energy festival where teams race through the streets carrying massive floats.

Local kilns and merchants gather at Ceramics Park for a spring market celebrating Hasami ware.

Portable shrines and hot-spring-water celebrations give thanks for Beppu's onsen.

A spring observance at Kagoshima Jingu prays for family well-being and a good harvest.

Spectacular Chinese lantern festival with 15,000 lanterns illuminating Nagasaki.

Rival groups compete for a wooden ball in a New Year ritual for good harvests and fishing.

Masked Boze deities appear at the end of the lunar Obon observances on Akuseki Island.

Ceramics stalls and shops fill the pottery town of Arita during its spring fair.

Mikoshi and white-robed unari attendants process through rice fields in a harvest-related shrine ritual.

Fan-shaped illuminated floats parade through Chiran, reflecting its cultural exchange with Aomori.