Tsuzawa Yotaka Andon Festival

The first weekend of June each year brings one of the highlights of the year in Oyabe: a unique lantern festival held as a prayer for a good harvest. The people of Oyabe build paper lanterns of various sizes, and put them on carts and floats to parade them around town, but visitors may be shocked at some of the designs — rather than being centered around a shrine, this festival belongs to the people, and with that comes a sense of freedom and creativity. The lantern designs are often traditional in nature, but neighborhoods are equally permitted to draw inspiration from pop culture characters or current events for their floats, leading to a fun combination of traditional Japanese festival aesthetics being used to depict characters from video games, cartoons, and more!
As day gives way to evening, lantern carts pulled by children and giant lantern floats (as much as six meters tall!) pulled by adults make their way around town, until these giant floats come together in the center of town for the main event. There, they line up on either end of the road, and they face off to crash into one another, destroying the front lanterns on each other’s floats. Yet, despite the excitement of these face-offs, there’s no sense of competition involved — their goal is to put on an exciting show for the spectators, rather than to “win.”

This exciting climax exists as a result of local history, growing out of a much less friendly sense of rivalry. Long ago, Oyabe was home to many sailors and other rough types. The day of the festival was once considered an “anything goes” day, so neighborhoods would deliberately sabotage one another’s lantern floats, crashing into them and throwing stones, all while plenty of alcohol flowed. As time passed, though, and modern policing became more common, the atmosphere took on a friendlier and more stylized tone, eventually becoming the family-friendly event seen today.