Encyclopedia of Shinto

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カテゴリー1： 5. Rites and Festivals
カテゴリー2： Individual Shrine Observances
Title
Ryūsei Matsuri
Text
"Dragon power festival." This daytime festival is held on October 5 at Muku Shrine in Yoshida Township, Chichibu County, Saitama Prefecture. A tower (yagura) and launch pad are built on a small hill behind the shrine. Bamboo tubes about ten centimeters in diameter and fifty centimeters in length are stuffed with gunpowder and attached to the front tips of bamboo poles that are at least 10 meters long. People from the village carry these devices, which are called ryūsei ("dragon power"), to the festival site. The ryūsei are erected on the launch pad and fired off one by one. They rise like rockets for one hundred meters or more, after which various imaginative parachutes open. The name of the festival owes itself to the rocket climbing to the sky like a dragon (ryū). The event is accompanied taiko drums and gongs. Each village creates one ryūsei for this day. All told, nearly 30 ryūsei are shot up into the sky.
— Mogi Sakae

Pronunciation in Japanese/用語音声

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