Kanazawa Hyakumangoku Festival

The Hyakumangoku Festival celebrates the founding of Kanazawa as the capital of the Maeda clan, the richest domain of feudal Japan, whose "million koku" of rice give the festival its name. It is held over the first weekend of June, and its centrepiece is the grand procession on the Saturday, in which a long line of participants in period costume, with horses, drummers and lion dancers accompany an actor playing Lord Maeda Toshiie into his new city.

After a departure ceremony at 14:00 the procession leaves the wooden Tsuzumi Gate outside Kanazawa Station at 14:20 and takes around three hours to reach Kanazawa Castle Park along Hyakumangoku-dori, where the celebrations run until 18:00. The kerbs are free and fill from early afternoon, so claim a spot with time to spare; the area near Oyama Shrine, where the procession pauses, is a good compromise between crowd and view. The days around it carry smaller events, among them a children's lantern and drum procession on the Friday evening, open-air tea gatherings on the Saturday and Sunday and a yuzen-washing session on the Asano River on the Sunday, which make the weekend worth staying for if you are already in the city. The Kaga Yuzen lantern floating on the Asano River is now held only every third year and is not on the programme in 2027.

Kanazawa is reached directly by shinkansen from Tokyo, and the whole procession route is walkable from the station. Hotels are busy but the festival does not fall in a national holiday, so it is far easier to book than the Golden Week events. It is a pageant with a cast rather than a sacred rite, so expect brass bands, dance troupes and schoolchildren alongside the samurai.