Jōzan Inari Jinja — Horan Enya

Every ten years, a hundred boats form a one-kilometre procession for its spirit.

A small shrine inside Matsue Castle park, the starting point of the Horan Enya: a procession of more than a hundred boats, a kilometre of boats along the Ōhashi and Ōi rivers, which every ten years carries the shrine's spirit on a seven-day visit to Adakaya Shrine and brings it back. Five special boats (櫂伝馬船), each with a dozen rowers, put on a show with the 櫂伝馬踊り dance, an intangible cultural property of the city of Matsue. The festival was founded in 1648 by the daimyō Matsudaira Naomasa to pray for the end of a famine, and it is now one of the three great boat festivals of Japan, together with Osaka's Tenjin Matsuri and Miyajima's Kangensai. The last edition was in May 2019: the next is in 2029.

Shinto shrine in Matsue Castle park, known almost exclusively for the Horan Enya, its festival held every ten years. The cycle, in the past every ten or twelve years depending on the period, has returned to a steady ten-year cycle since 2010.

ℹ️ Free access, inside the free Matsue Castle park (beyond the Kitasōmon Bridge). No fixed opening hours are published for the shrine itself; the festival lasts nine days in mid-May, once every ten years, the next in 2029.

🚉 Matsue-Shinjiko-Onsen · 21 min walk

Sources: city.matsue.lg.jp · kankou-shimane.com · ja.wikipedia.org

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