Gobo Festival
Gobo Festival (御坊祭) is held annually on the 4th and 5 October at Shinohachiman Shrine (小竹八幡神社) in Gobo City, Wakayama, Japan. It is at least 430 years old. It is the biggest festival in the Gobo and Hidaka Districts of Wakayama Prefecture. There is an old saying that if you want to see crowds, go to Gobo Festival. One source says that around 30,000 people attend the festival. The Festival. Nine districts from Gobo City and the neighboring Miahama Town take part in the festival: Nakagumi, Hamanosegumi, Shimogumi, Kishinogumi, Gobocho, Nayagumi, Higashisonogumi, Kasugagumi, and Kamigumi. The number of  districts has varied over time, and at one point there were 10 districts, but the district called Kasugagumi no longer participates. Each neighborhood partakes in different activities, including carrying omikoshi (お神輿), or portable shrines, carrying yotsudaiko (四つ太鼓) - wooden structures which hold 4 boys playing taiko drums, playing traditional flute songs, banner raising, and performing lion dances (獅子舞). Girls carry lanterns and play the flute, while boys and men carry lanterns, play taiko, and carry the omikoshi and yotsudaiko. The ceremony on the 4th is a preliminary celebration on the eve of the festival day, known as Yoimatsuri (宵祭). In Gobo , it is referred to as the "Kasazoroe Ceremony" (傘揃え式). For this ceremony, each district's banners are brought together in the shrine grounds. (Banners are an important symbol of status at the festival.) After 12pm, the banners, yotsudaiko, and portable shrines enter the shrine grounds in order, and pass under the tori gate. Lion dances and "servant dances" are performed as an offering, and then everyone departs. On the morning of the 5th, each district's banners and portable shrines make a procession with a Shinto priest in the lead, and a Shinto ceremony is performed. After this, the  procession makes a lap around town, and returns to the shrine. On years when the yotsudaiko have been built anew, the yotsudaiko also accompany this procession. When this is the case, the procession goes to the beach and the new yotsudaiko are purified in the waves. After the procession has returned to the shrine, dances such as the sparrow dance and the "Kehon Dance" are performed. (The Kehon Dance has been designated as the prefecture's number one abstract cultural asset.) Next, the banners, portable shrines, and yotsudaiko begin a procession outside the shrine as lion dances and the "Yatsu  Dance" are performed inside. At the end of the night, each district's portable shrines once again enter the shrine grounds in order, although they struggle against one another to keep from entering for as long as possible. The yotsudaiko chant "rainenno, rainenno nagonagori shanai," which means "can't help that next year we'll be reluctant to part too." Once they have all returned to the shrine hall, the lanterns are extinguished and it is said that the ancestors' spirits return as well to the shrine as the festival ends.