Japan's Best Fireworks Festivals: Where and When to See Them
Japan's Best Fireworks Festivals: Where and When to See Them
Japan fires more shells in August than most countries do in a year, and the summer hanabi calendar is crowded enough that choosing badly means spending four hours in a queue for twenty minutes of sky. This guide is the short list: three national competitions where the fireworks are judged rather than merely fired, two of the great city displays, and one November alternative on Awaji Island for anyone who would rather not do any of it in the heat.
The distinction worth understanding first is between a competition and a display. At a competition each pyrotechnician designs and enters their own shell, and the crowd watches for symmetry, colour changes and how cleanly it dies. At a display, one company fires a programme. Both are worth seeing; they are not the same evening.
At a Glance
- The three national competitions: Omagari in August, Tsuchiura in November, Nagaoka in August
- The great city displays: Sumida River in Tokyo and Lake Suwa in Nagano
- The quiet alternative: Awaji Island at Sumoto, in November
- Getting in and out, which is most of the planning
Omagari, Akita: the national competition
Held on the last Saturday of August, Omagari is the one the pyrotechnicians themselves care about most. Around twenty-eight competitors each fire a piece they designed, judged for the Prime Minister's Award, and between rounds the crowd is quieter than at any other fireworks night in Japan.
It also runs a daytime round from the late afternoon, using shells that burst into coloured smoke rather than light. Almost nowhere else does this, and it is the reason to arrive before evening.
Tsuchiura, Ibaraki: the November competition
The other national competition runs on the first Saturday of November, and the month is the point. Cold, dry autumn air holds a shell's colour and outline better than August humidity, so competitors save their sharpest work for it.
Three categories are judged separately: rapid starmine sequences, single ten-inch shells, and a creative class. Bring more warmth than the daytime temperature suggests; the riverbank gets genuinely cold once you stop moving.
Nagaoka, Niigata: the memorial
Nagaoka fires on 2 and 3 August every year, and the dates do not move because they follow the anniversary of the 1945 air raid on the city. The opening Shirayuri shell goes up in silence, and the closing Phoenix sequence runs two kilometres along the Shinano river to music.
It is the largest of the three by shell count, and the one where the crowd stands still through the finale rather than cheering.
Sumida River, Tokyo: the oldest
Traced to 1733, when it was held for the dead of a famine and an epidemic, the Sumida display is the ancestor of the whole summer calendar rather than just an old example of it. Two launch sites fire at once, upstream and downstream of Asakusa.
Be warned that the riverbank is no longer really watchable: the crowd runs to about a million and police restrict standing on the nearest streets. Most Tokyo residents watch from further out. It falls on the last Saturday of July, with the exact date confirmed in spring.
Lake Suwa, Nagano: the loudest
Suwa sits in a basin, and the mountains around the lake return the report a beat after each burst while the water doubles the light. The result is more physical than a display of the same size over a city.
The date is fixed to 15 August, which puts it inside the Obon holiday, so rooms in Suwa go months ahead. Staying in Matsumoto or Chino and taking the train in is the usual workaround.
Sumoto, Awaji Island: the November alternative
Almost every coastal display in Japan happens in July or August. Sumoto moved its to early November, and the difference shows: clear air off the Kii channel, an empty beach, and about four thousand shells reading sharply against a dark autumn sky.
It is a half hour programme rather than a two hour one, fired close in from Ohama beach so the sound arrives with the light. There is no railway on Awaji Island, so the highway bus from Maiko is how you get there, and the return bus is the thing to plan before the display rather than after it.
Awaji Island Festival Fireworks
Getting in and out
For every festival on this list, the travel is a larger problem than the viewing. Trains out of Omagari, Tsuchiura and Suwa are heavily congested afterwards, and on Awaji Island there is no train at all. Decide how you are leaving before you decide where you are standing.
Paid seating is worth it at the two competitions, where being on the riverbank genuinely changes what you can judge, and at Sumida, where the free options have largely been removed. Omagari sells by lottery months ahead. Elsewhere, arriving an hour early at a wide site like Ohama beach is enough.
One thing that catches visitors out: many of these dates are fixed to the calendar rather than to a weekend. Nagaoka is always 2 and 3 August, Lake Suwa is always 15 August, and both land mid-week regularly. Check the day of the week before booking around them.