Japan's Wind & Kite Festivals

About this book

Japan's festivals begin by reading the wind. Two armies haul a pair of tangled giant kites down into a river. A newborn's name rises over Hamamatsu on a first kite. A whole town dances down an autumn street to keep the typhoon away from its rice. A strip of paper turns beneath a glass bell, and a house knows the evening has cooled — without anyone looking up.

Japan's Wind & Kite Festivals is the complete guide to that wind culture: 200 entries in eight parts — the great kite battles of Shirone, Sanjo and Hamamatsu and the hundred-jō giants; the kites of the calendar, from the January markets to Children's Day; the makers' craft of bamboo, washi and paint; the wind rites that raise the breeze and calm the storm; the cloth that swims in the wind — carp streamers, great-catch flags and Tanabata streamers; the sound of wind, from temple futaku to the glass fūrin; the working wind of sails, winnowing fans and drying yards; and the modern sky of stunt kites, aerial cameras, memorial flights and revived designs.

Every entry gives the region, the place, the season in a typical year and the type of event, with a two-part account and a practical Good to Know note — including how to spend a wind-waiting day and where the stewards' ropes run — all newly written for this book, and checked on 2026-11-05. A regional index and a glossary of wind words complete the volume. The companion volumes, Japan's Fire & Light Festivals and Japan's Water Festivals & River Rites, tell the other elements' stories.