This Festival in Japan Makes a Whole Town Transform Into Foxes
Since I moved to Japan, I have discovered countless beautiful festivals. They exist all over the country and it’s estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of them in Japan.
Some of them are quite known, like the Takayama Festival or the Gion Matsuri in Kyoto. Some others are quite unknown hidden gems waiting for us to stumble upon them, like the one I’m going to tell you about.
🦊 Fox Wedding Festival (Kitsune-bi Matsuri), Hida-Furukawa
In a tiny picturesque town somewhere in Gifu Prefecture, this very special festival is celebrated on the 4th Saturday of September every year. On that day, Hida-Furukawa goes from being a sleepy town by the river into being a busy place full of people dressed up as foxes and waiting to celebrate one of their most beloved festivals.
The Fox Wedding Festival has a really cute story behind it. It is based on japanese fairytale that seems to have originated from glowing lights that were seen sometimes in the evenings, which people believed were the torchlights of fox processions. The so-called “Sunshower” fairytale claims that sneaky foxes created rain on a sunny day so that humans would stay inside and they could celebrate their wedding.
What you can see in Hida-Furukawa nowadays to celebrate this ancient folktale is like a scene from a movie.Â
The whole town lights up with lanterns along the canals full of koi fish and japanese people walk around in their Yukatas and Kimonos, with fox makeup, fox ears or sometimes even a fox tail hanging from their back.
The decorated streets of Hida-Furukawa during the Fox Wedding Festival
The festival‘s main event is in the evening, when the town has gone dark and the lanterns are glowing along the streets. People gather at the Festival Square and wait for the procession of “foxes” carrying torches and illuminating the way for the fox couple that is about to get married. The lucky couple is chosen from applicants from all over the country and is carried around in a Rickshaw around the beautiful town of Hida-Furukawa during this festival.
It is believed that catching a glimpse of the couple will give you good fortune in several aspects of your life, which explains the crowds of people waiting to see them pass by.
The parade carrying the fox couple around the streets of Hida-Furukawa
I hope you enjoyed reading about Kistune-Bi Matsuri! If you want to see the traditional side of Japan and experience something that most tourists do not get to see, this festival is the perfect event to include in your Japan itinerary!
Hida-Furukawa is such a small town that it might not be the easiest task to find accommodation, but the nearby city of Takayama is way bigger and has many accommodation options to choose from. There are frequent buses and trains connecting the two places in less than half an hour.Â
