Activities & Events Calendar

The Nagoshi Grand Festival is Hakata's representative summer festival. The ritual celebrates the purification abilities of the deity enshrined at Chikuzen Province Sumiyoshi Shrine: misogi purification (to cleanse the body with water) and harae purification (to cleanse the heart and mind). The Nagoshi festival is meant to quell an evil god of disease, and is a summer festival to pray for good health, always lively with locals. The Main Hall Festival will begin at 10:00 a.m. on July 31st, during participants can pass through a ring of straw 4 meters in diameter (the "Kaya-no-rin Kuguri" ritual, for purification), and during the Kawagishi Festival at 7:00 p.m., people will send paper dolls down the Naka River in the "Hitogata Nagashi" ritual. The Sumiyoshi deities are enshrined at Sumiyoshi Shrine, and it is said that the Nagoshi Grand Festival also stems from belief in the Sumiyoshi deities. *The legend of the Sumiyoshi deities: When Izanami, wife of the god Izanagi died, Izanagi traveled to the underworld to see her. Afterwards, to cleanse himself of the impurity of the world of the dead, he entered the ocean and performed a purification with water, from which the three Sumiyoshi deities (Sokotsutsu-no-o, Nakatsutsu-no-o, and Uhatsutsu-no-o) were born. According to the Kojiki, one of Japan's oldest historical chronicles, the ocean where this ritual was performed is said to be the land when Chikuzen Province's Sumiyoshi Shrine currently stands.