At the Matsubara Hachiman shrine near Himeji, three mikoshi are carried by teams from seven villages and driven into one another at speed — the more damage, the better the omen. The shrines are rebuilt each year because they are expected to be destroyed.
Alongside them, seven yatai floats weighing around two tonnes each are raised and jostled on a hillside by teams of eighty.
No attendance figure is collected in this pass.
The dates are fixed at 14–15 October, with the main collisions on the second day. Injuries are routine and the teams accept them as part of the festival's standing.
Himeji is on the Shinkansen between Osaka and Okayama, and its castle is the finest surviving in Japan — most visitors come for that and have no idea what happens in the hills above the town in October.
PlanningFixed on 14–15 October; the collisions are on the fifteenth at the Otabiyama hillside.
Dates
computed from the rule
Computed from the recurrence rule we record for this entry, not copied from a listing. A date marked ~ comes from a calendar conversion and the observance may fall a day or two either side.