Calendar
Detailed information is supplied for the rites in blue.
August
Bonbori Festival 雪洞祭
Bonbori is the Japanese lamp with a paper shade. Various pictures and examples of calligraphy offered to Tsurugaoka Hachimangu are mounted to look like lamps, which are lined up beautifully along the pathway to the shrine. About 400 lampshades are set up in the precinct for the Bonbori festival.
The festival was first held in 1938 with the great cooperation of artists and celebrities living in and around Kamakura city. Today, the shrine receives many contributions of drawings from famous people for the making of the lampshades. During the Bonbori festival, Bonbori are placed in the precinct, and people can enjoy the masterpieces inscribed on the lanterns, and the fantastic sight of twilight shadow and soft lights after sunset. The candle lights queuing along the stone paths in the twilight is a much loved scene of summer.
The Bonbori festival is composed of the following rituals and events from autumn’s Eve to 9th August
- Autumn's Eve
- Nagoshi-sai (End of Summer) 夏越祭
3pm
The ritual for Summer Ends on the last day of summer. Purifies defilement and purges the body and the spirit. A special ancient-style purification is held at the pond.
Chinowa (a large ring made of cogon grass, about 2m in diameter) is set at the pathway leading to the shrine for the purging of misdeeds, misfortunes, and impurity. - The first day of Autumn
- Risshu-sai (Start of Autumn) 立秋祭
5pm
The ritual for Autumn Begins on the first day of autumn. Prayers are offered for an abundant harvest and thanks for a healthy life. A bell-ringing cricket is dedicated to the shrine kami and conveys the pleasure of the coming of autumn with its bell-ringing sound.※Kami (the Japanese word for Shinto deities or sacred beings)
- 9th
- Sanetomo-sai (Minamoto Sanetomo) 実朝祭
10am
The ritual for Sanetomo, the 3rd Kamakura shogunate praises his virtue.