The Kodama Autumn Festival is a traditional festival float festival that takes places on Culture Day annually. A highlight of the festival is the parade of sacred horses. Culture day is on November 3rd and is a public holiday in Japan. This festival centers around Hachiman Shrine.
Kodama Autumn Festival
The Kodama Autumn Festival is the annual festival of the Hachiman Shrine. A highlight of the festival is that gojimne sacred horses lead the procession of the shrine. Four festival floats participate in the festival, playing traditional ohayashi music as they go. When they arrive at the station they have a fight off! At night the festival floats are lit up by lanterns. There is a simultaneous event from 5 pm to 8 pm at Nagahamamachi Community Center with taiko, dance and karaoke!
The Kodama area’s mikoshi portable shrines are shown at the Kodama Summer Festival. There are nine portable shrines in the Kodama Summer Festival, one for each district. Interestingly and very uniquely, this year they carried the portable shrines around town on the top of cars as a way to prevent the spread of Coronavirus! Thankfully, for the Autumn festival, people are not as in close proximity in the festival floats.
Information
Event: Kodama Autumn Festival 児玉秋祭り
Venue: Kodama District Town Area ~ from Hachimangu to Kodama Station (see map in poster below), Nagahamamachi Community Center (see access below the poster)
Date: November 3rd
Time: from 10 am to 10 pm
Access
The festival is close to the Kodama Station on JR Hachiko line. The procession starts from Hachimangu shrine which is about eight minutes walk from the station. On Google Maps.
There is parking for about 400 cars. The festival area is about five kilometers from the Honjo Kodama Interchange of the Kanetsu Expressway.
Find even more things to do in Saitama this autumn here.