Nagasaki Kunchi

Kunchi is the autumn festival of Suwa Shrine, the guardian shrine of Nagasaki. The organisers date it to 1634, when two women offered the noh chant Komai at the shrine, and many of the performances still have a foreign flavour. The city has 58 odori-cho, performing neighbourhoods, divided into seven groups, so a neighbourhood's turn to perform comes once every seven years. Each one leads with its kasaboko, a parasol-shaped float that is the neighbourhood's emblem and is decorated to suit its name; the organisers' glossary says it weighs 130 to 150 kg, and it is carried by one person. Behind it comes the offering itself: a dragon dance, a whale spouting water, boats, or the Kokkodesho, a drum float that its bearers lift, spin and throw into the air. The organisers note that these offering dances are designated a national Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property. In 2026 six neighbourhoods performed: Imakago, Aburaya, Motofuna, Uwa, Kajiya and Chikugo. Preparations begin on 1 June with the Koyairi, when the performers are purified at Suwa and Yasaka shrines and start rehearsing. On 3 October the neighbourhoods display their floats, costumes and props in shopfronts, and on 4 October the performers show themselves in full costume around town. On 7 October at 13:00 three portable shrines leave Suwa Shrine for the Otabisho, the temporary shrine by the port, carried by men from the old village districts of Nagasaki; on 9 October at 13:00 they return, climbing Kenchozaka and the shrine's stone steps. The offerings are made at four dance grounds: Suwa Shrine, the Otabisho, Yasaka Shrine and Chuo Park. Between them, from 7 to 9 October, each neighbourhood performs short pieces in front of homes, shops and offices around the centre, the niwasaki-mawari. Spectators call "Mottekoi!" to bring back a float that has left, "Fuutomaware!" to make a kasaboko spin in a wide circle, and "Shomoyare!" for an encore of a dance.