Kanda Matsuri

Kanda Matsuri is the festival of Kanda Myojin, the shrine on the hill above Akihabara that serves Kanda, Nihonbashi, Akihabara and Otemachi-Marunouchi. In the Edo period its procession was allowed inside Edo Castle and watched by the shogun, and people called it a tenka matsuri, a festival of the realm. From the Enpo era it has alternated with the Sanno Matsuri of Hie Shrine, which is why the full festival comes round only in odd-numbered years. In even years there is a kagesai, a quieter year: the rites are held at the shrine, with no procession and no miyairi. The Shinkosai procession takes a whole Saturday. In 2025 it left the shrine after a rite at about 7:20, stopped at the Masakado mound in Otemachi around 10:00, passed through Nihonbashi, and gathered at the Mitsukoshi main store in the late afternoon, where the costumed tsukematsuri joined it. It came up Chuo-dori through Akihabara a little after 17:00 and was back at the shrine at about 18:20. At its centre are three vehicles carrying the shrine's gods, two phoenix-topped horen for the first and third deities, the third being Taira no Masakado, and a mikoshi for the second. The other half of the festival belongs to the neighbourhoods. More than 200 mikoshi, large and small, are carried up to Kanda Myojin one after another, some on the Saturday evening and most of them through the Sunday.