murmurKaizu Rikishi Festival
Takashima City · Kaizu Tenjinsha Shrine, Makino, Takashima
Dates and details can change. Always check the official website before you go.
Biwako Takashima 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 late April
- How the date is set
- Every year on April 29 Held every year on April 29
- Venue
- Kaizu Tenjinsha Shrine, Makino, Takashima
- City
- Takashima City, Shiga
About
On April 29, the spring festival of Kaizu Tenjinsha Shrine in Makino, Takashima, goes by the name Rikishi (Sumo Wrestler) Festival. At 1:00 pm young men in bright ceremonial sumo aprons carry two portable shrines out of the shrine, split into groups for the Kaizu and Nishihama districts, and shake the shrines fiercely up, down and sideways as they chant through town. They cover the same route again in the evening, and when the shrines come back around 8:00 pm the grounds erupt in rough jostling by torchlight. The custom reportedly began about 300 years ago, when Kaizu thrived as a port sending goods from Hokuriku to Kyoto, and young men at the shipping merchants put on sumo aprons to compete over whose was most handsome.
Sources
- OfficialBiwako Takashima Tourism Association takashima-kanko.jp
- OfficialBiwako Visitors Bureau (Shiga Tourism Information) www.biwako-visitors.jp
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.