Four Tonne Wooden Floats Will Be Run at Speed Around Right Angled Street Corners in Osaka This Weekend
More than two hundred people pull each danjiri while a carpenter dances on the roof, in a festival that has run since 1703 and draws four hundred thousand spectators.
The Kishiwada Danjiri Matsuri returns to Osaka Prefecture with an eve festival on 19 September 2026 and the main festival on 20 September, after trial runs on 6 and 18 September.
Each danjiri float weighs about four tonnes, stands four metres high and is built from Japanese zelkova wood. More than two hundred people pull and steer each one, every participant with a defined role, and more than 400,000 spectators attend each year.
The signature move is the yarimawashi. Rather than slowing for a street corner, the teams accelerate into it and swing the float through a sharp right angle at speed. A daiku-gata, or carpenter, rides on the roof of the moving float calling out directions and dancing, his best known move an airplane pose.
The danger is openly acknowledged. Guides to the festival note that even the slightest mistake can lead to injury, that the floats are susceptible to sudden unexpected movements, and that they can crash into a house or a telegraph pole or overturn.
The festival is said to have started in 1703, when the lord of Kishiwada Castle opened the castle grounds to the surrounding neighbourhoods in prayer for a good harvest, giving it roughly three hundred years of history. The route runs through the streets around Haruki Station on the Nankai Main Line and Kishiwada's old town. A second leg follows in October, with a trial run on the fourth, an eve festival on the tenth and the main day on the eleventh.