Ebisu is the god of commerce and fishing, and Osaka — a merchant city before it was anything else — keeps his festival with a seriousness that matches. Over three days around a million people pass through the Imamiya Ebisu shrine to buy fukusasa, lucky bamboo branches hung with miniature rice bales, gold coins and sea bream, sold by women in red hakama.
The shrine stays open through the night of the tenth, the Residual Day.
No attendance figure is collected in this pass; the shrine publishes one.
It is a working commercial ritual rather than a spectacle for visitors: the people queuing are shopkeepers, restaurateurs and company staff buying for their businesses, and the charms go up behind the counter the same afternoon.
PlanningFixed on 9–11 January; the Imamiya Ebisu shrine runs around the clock and the queues are managed in shifts.
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.