Neputa Summer Festival OJIMA , JAPAN: 2023

Greetings photography lovers. In this post I’ll be sharing some photos of a unique summer festival that can only be seen in two towns in Japan. The name of the festival is Neputa and the town in which I attended is called Ōjima, located in Ota City, Gunma prefecture.

The Ojima Neputa festival takes place annually on August 14 and 15 in Ōta, Gunma, Japan. Hosted at the Ojima district's shopping street, attendees come from nearby prefectures, drawing a crowd of over 200,000 people over the two days. This festival is a significant event in Ota city and has its roots in Aomori Prefecture's Hirosaki city, where the alliance between Old Ojima town was established in 1986 as sister cities. I heard this was done in the name of history to honor a Samurai lord who had strong ties to both towns. It is said that he also started the Neputa festival in Aomori.

In its initial years, the festival had modest beginnings, confined to an elementary school's yard and Ojima park. Yet, over time, it grew significantly in size, prompting the closure of the 354 national highways as it expanded. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry played a pivotal role in fostering camaraderie between the two cities, and this collaborative effort is what established the tradition of the Neputa festival in Ojima.

_{Source: Wikipedia}

The festival hasn’t been held in the last 4 years ( you know why) and it was my first time actually attending the event even though I’ve been living close to the district for years. The reason I‘ve never went is because I thought it was out of the way and no different from any other festival in the region, I was wrong. It is actually the festival you don’t want to miss as the “Neputa”, huge and artistic glowing fans are paraded up and down the street accompanied by giant drums with beautiful women atop them beating a rythme that once sounded the alarm of war. Well that’s how I interpreted it.

After a four year hiatus, another unforeseen hindrance in the form of a typhoon 🌀 put a stop to the first day of the festival as it was officially canceled. Interestingly, it didn’t even rain that day. So even after four years, Neputa lovers only had one day to enjoy the festival. But to tell the truth, I think it’s enough.

On the day of the Neputa festival, I didn’t plan to go and I even talked to a friend about the troubles of parking and the huge crowd. But then another friend informed me that we have a mutual acquaintance who lives right by the street the festival takes place and that he had a huge parking lot to accommodate us. And so it was confirmed, I would attend my first Neputa festival. I grabbed my camera and was off to see the grandness. Here are. few of the photos I took. Enjoy them and I won’t bore you with much ado. Just do me one favor, comment below your favorite photo. Thanks 🙏.

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Hope you enjoyed the photos. I’ll leave you with a video of me taking the some of the actual shots. It’s a neat feature of the Canon M50.

_{Photos on OpenSea}