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Read more →Kanto Matsuri is one of the Tohoku region's three great summer festivals, and it has been held in Akita every August since the Edo period. The earliest records date to around 1789, when the festival was already an established part of the Tanabata season. The kanto pole itself was originally a prayer offering, a way of asking for a good harvest and the health of the household. The lanterns represented ears of rice. That origin is still present in the shape of the pole and the way the lanterns are arranged, even if most visitors today come for the spectacle rather than the ritual.
The scale of the modern festival is hard to describe without sounding like you're exaggerating. On a single evening, roughly 280 poles go up simultaneously along Kanto-odori Avenue. Each one is assembled from sections of Ogatake bamboo, a variety grown specifically for its combination of flexibility and tensile strength. The paper lanterns are made by hand in Akita workshops, and the frames are replaced each year. A full-size competition kanto with all 46 lanterns lit weighs around 50 kg. The sashite who carry them train year-round, and the best performers can hold a pole on a single fingertip for several seconds.