What to do and see in Aichi Prefecture, Chubu: The Best Cultural Events

One of the classic hallmarks of summer in the city of Gamagori, the Gamagori Festival is held on a Saturday every July, attracting over 200,000 visitors a year to its wide variety of events. On Sunday, the festival concludes with a fireworks display in the cool of the evening. The show's biggest attractions are its giant "3-shakudama" fireworks, the largest class of fireworks on the Pacific Coast, which reach diameters of 650 meters-they leave the crowds truly awestruck when they light up the night sky.

Held in Nagoya at the end of August each year, "Nippon Domannaka Festival" is Japan's largest dance festival. Started in 1999 mainly by Nagoya students, the scale has grown year by year to its current 200 teams and 23,000 participants. As long as they dance to a tune that incorporates a passage from a local folk song and while holding clappers in their hands, the event is open for all citizens to participate.

This festival from Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture got its start with the Nagoya Commerce Festival of 1955. While its name has changed, it is still going strong, being held on the first Saturday and Sunday of October. The must-see is the "Heroes' Parade." Three participants selected from an open call play the part of Aichi's three heroes (Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu), and they lead a troupe of 600 people from Nagoya Station to Nagoya Castle in a gorgeous parade. Other must-sees are the Float Parade, a designated national cultural asset, and the Kagura Parade, a cultural asset designated by the city.

Konomiya's Hadaka Matsuri is based on a traditional Shinto ritual, Owari Okunitama Shrine's Naoi Shinji, or "Dispelling of Misfortune Ritual." Held on January 13 on Japan's old lunar calendar, the festival sees thousands of men-particularly those at the critical ages of 42 and 25-descend upon the shrine clad only in bleached loincloths, or simply white tabi socks and nothing else. From among these crowds emerge holy men in white kimonos, and the struggle among the festivalgoers to be touched by the holy men and supposedly be spiritually cleansed can get quite fierce. The buckets of water carried by the men can give off steam from all the surrounding body heat, making for a stirring-yet quite feverish-sight.

This historic festival has been held in Toyota, Aichi since the Kakamura period (1185-1333). The festival centers on a Shinto ritual dedicated to driving away evil spirits, where handheld firework cannons are ignited and offered up on the grounds of Yoshida Shrine. It boasts what has now become the largest fireworks display in the East Mikawa region, held on the eve of festival proper, sending a endless parade of fireworks, including the tetsuzu cannons, trick fireworks, and starmines, rocketing off into the night sky. The day after the fireworks, the festival features a portable shrine procession known as the Yoritomo Parade. Shrine parishioners clad in traditional dress and teams of three performing the Sasao-odori dance attend the palanquin as it travels throughout the town while children dressed up as military commanders hand out steamed manju buns.