The Kawagoe Festival was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID, but it looks like 2022’s festival will go ahead.
Per the City of Kawagoe website:
“The 2022 Kawagoe Festival will be held on Saturday October 15 and Sunday October 16, taking the COVID-19 situation into account.
Because the October situation can’t be predicted in advance, the scope and scale of the festival will be decided in stages.”
The photos below are from a pre-COVID Kawagoe Festival.
Personally I love the night-time atmosphere — strolling around with a Coedo beer in hand, watching the floats glide by.
About the Kawagoe Festival:
<Origins>
The festival started in 1648, when the lord of Kawagoe domain at the time invited Kawagoe Hikawa Shrine to hold a festival.
It has roughly 370 years of history.
<A local’s perspective>
During the Kawagoe Festival, ornate parade floats — some designated Important Cultural Properties — wind through the city.
These days the festival runs on a weekend, but in the past the dates were fixed, so the festival often fell on weekdays.
At local elementary schools, kids who lived in a neighborhood that owned a float were excused from afternoon classes to help pull the float — apparently this was the source of much jealousy among the kids who weren’t (according to my wife).
※ The neighborhoods that own floats are within the old castle town. Areas that used to be rice paddies don’t have floats. To this day, real estate prices in the float-owning neighborhoods are higher than in the non-float-owning neighborhoods.
<Cultural Heritage Status>
“Kawagoe Hikawa Festival’s Float Procession”:
2005 — Designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Japan
2016 — Inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list as part of “Yama, Hoko, Yatai, float festivals in Japan”
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