F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-237

Akasaki Festival (Yukata Festival)

赤崎祭（ゆかたまつり）あかさきまつり（ゆかたまつり）

The Akasaki Festival is the annual rite of Akasaki Shrine — the only one of the 125 shrines that make up Ise Grand Shrine located within Toba City — held every year on June 22. Known as the festival that announces the arrival of summer in Toba, it draws crowds of visitors dressed in yukata (summer cotton kimono), which is why it is also called the 'Yukata Festival.' Votive lanterns line the stone steps leading up to the shrine, and more than a hundred food stalls stretch from the approach down toward the mouth of the Kamo River, drawing crowds on the order of eight thousand people each year. The festival's most distinctive feature is the custom of receiving a small cedar sprig (sugiba) taken from the sacred precinct's cedar trees and hanging it at one's gate as a charm against epidemic disease. The practice derives from a legend that, when a plague once swept the region, only the households that hung a cedar branch from the shrine grove at their entrance escaped harm, and it is regarded as a local variant of the Somin Shorai epidemic-warding belief. A representative summer tradition of the Ise-Shima region, it brings together the solemn character of an Ise auxiliary shrine and the festive amusement of a modern summer festival.