7 Events in Mie Prefecture That You Shouldn't Miss

The Japanese Grand Prix is a Formula One World Championship car racing event. Top drivers from the world over come to compete in what is often a title-deciding race at the end of the sporting season. Adrenaline runs high as huge crowds are drawn to the stadiums to watch top-performing vehicles handle over 150 miles of looped driving, and the excellent motorists who control them at speeds of up to 150 miles per hour.

The Kuwana Suigo Fireworks Display was initiated in 1934 to commemorate the completion of Ise Bridge. Although suspended for a time during the war, the display carries on a fireworks tradition right up to today. Held in late July on a sandbar in the middle of the Ibi River, the event features the launching of approximately 10,000 fireworks in roughly an hour and a half. Airborne star mines, waterfalls, and star mines emerging from the water follow one after another, and the climax is a No. 20 Ball firework that lights up the night sky with one of the most impressive bursts of the Tokai region.

The Kanname Hoshukusai celebration, in which the year's newly harvested rice is offered up to the god of the shrine in thanks, is held every year on October 15th. The celebration consists of the hauling of the first ears of rice and the Kanname Hoshukusai, and on this occasion a variety of festivals from throughout Japan - such as the Awa Odori dance from Tokushima, the Hanagasa dance from Yamagata, and the Eisa dance from Okinawa - come to Ise and weave their way through the city.

This festival is held every October 23rd-25th at the Ueno Tenjingu Shrine in Iga City, Mie Prefecture, famous as the place where ninja got their start and as the birthplace of the haiku poet Matsuo Basho. The largest festival in Iga, this event boasts more than 400 years of history and has even been designated nationally as an Important Intangible Folk-Culture Asset. At the main festival, on October 25th, the largest Shinto wand in Japan (weighing in at 120 kg), followed by a magnificently decorated portable shrine, a procession of well more than a hundred demons wearing humorously frightening masks, and nine lavishly-decorated festival floats, makes its way boisterously through the streets of the castle town to musical accompaniment.

This festival is held every year on the 4th Friday in July around the port of Toba in Toba City, Mie Prefecture, famous as the gateway to the sea of Ise-Shima. The festival is also the annual grand festival of the Toba branch-shrine of Kotohira-gu Shrine, and includes such Shinto rituals as a temporary-palace festival and a waterborne procession with a portable shrine. Approximately 100 open-air stalls are set up around the site of the festival, and the festival includes all sorts of highly attended events such as a Japanese drum performance as well as dances by the local people. The festival reaches its greatest intensity in the evening with a fireworks display: roughly 4,000 brightly colored fireworks paint the sky and sea of Toba Bay, a magnificent spectacle referred to as "the night that the sea burns."

This historic fireworks display, first held in 1953, is one of the Three Great Fireworks Competitions of Japan, participated in by pyrotechnicians selected from throughout Japan. Competition in the skyrockets category includes the setting off of three No. 5 Rockets and one No. 10 Rocket, while the star mine category sees the launching of a variety of fireworks one after the other. As part of the event, the pyrotechnicians offer up fireworks at Ise Shrine along with prayers for safety with the fireworks.

This fireworks show, held at Fuso Ryokuchi in the Port of Yokkaichi, sees roughly 4,000 fireworks such as jumbo star mines and wide star mines launched into the night sky. The show includes commemorative fireworks, in which private individuals sponsor fireworks where messages of birthday congratulations, marriage proposals, or wedding anniversary felicitations are read out when the firework is launched, making for an exciting event. Collaboration between industrial complexes and fireworks, such as can only be found in the industrial city of Yokkaichi, offers a spectacle that is truly unique, not to be found in any other fireworks display.