murmurHanakae Matsuri at Kanegasaki-gu Shrine
Tsuruga City · Kanegasaki-gu Shrine
Dates and details can change. Always check the official website before you go.
Minato Tsuruga Tourism Association · Last checked: Oct 11, 2026
Dates
Dates not confirmed
- 2026
- Dates have not been announced yet. Please check the official website.
- 2027
- Dates have not been announced yet. Please check the official website.
- Usual timing
- Usually early April
- How the date is set
- Changes from year to year Held each year during cherry blossom season, from late March into early April
- Venue
- Kanegasaki-gu Shrine
- City
- Tsuruga City, Fukui
About
From late March into early April, while the cherries bloom, Kanegasaki-gu Shrine in Tsuruga holds a festival built around a sweet custom: visitors call out "Hanakae-mashou" ("Shall we exchange blossoms?") and trade small cherry sprigs as a wish for happiness. In the late Meiji era it became the fashion to take a sprig from the shrine to someone you were fond of and swap blossoms if the feeling was returned, earning the shrine the name Shrine of Love. About a thousand cherry trees surround the grounds. Look out for exchanges with the shrine's Fukumusume, evening illumination, a raffle for Tsuruga specialties and the Hanakae rite on weekends. A sprig costs 700 yen. The shrine sits on Kanegasaki, famous for a Sengoku-era retreat, and a sightseeing bus runs there from JR Tsuruga Station.
Sources
- OfficialMinato Tsuruga Tourism Association tsuruga-kanko.jp
- OfficialKanegasaki-gu Shrine kanegasakigu.com
- OfficialFukui Dot Com (Fukui Prefectural Tourism Federation) www.fuku-e.com
Last checked: Oct 11, 2026. Event information is based on official announcements, but changes may not always be reflected here. Please check each official website for accurate details.
Other events this month
On the day, see what locals are murmuring on the murmur map
murmur is an app that shows short, anonymous posts on a map, right where they were written. On festival day, open the map around the venue and see what people nearby are saying.