Nagasaki was Japan's only open port through the two centuries of national seclusion, and its Chinese community has been there since the seventeenth century. The lantern festival began as that community's new year celebration in Shinchi Chinatown and was adopted by the city in 1994.
Around fifteen thousand lanterns are hung across the centre, with dragon dances, acrobatics and a procession of the Emperor and Empress.
No attendance figure is collected in this pass.
This is the only entry in the Japanese file set by a lunar calendar. Japan moved its festivals onto the Gregorian calendar in 1873; Nagasaki's Chinese festival did not move, and it therefore drifts between late January and late February while every other Japanese entry here sits on a fixed or seasonal date.
PlanningSet by the Chinese lunar new year, so it moves between late January and late February — the one lunar entry in the Japanese calendar.
Dates
from a published table
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.