Matsuri in rural areas: where to find information?

Question

For an upcoming travel in Japan I would like to visit some matsuri in not so touristic places/more rural areas.

Trying to search online for matsuri calendar returned me only hits for famous events like the Gion Matsuri in Kyoto.

Are there online resources with something like a calendar of which matsuri will take place where?

Answer 1

I am not aware of any exhaustive list of matsuri in Japan (estimates say there are 100,000+ of them across the country in a year). However, there is one trick that I often use and it may help you sometimes to find out more information about very local festivals. The key is to google search it in Japanese language instead of English (or anything else) because these information are often given out on japanese only websites. Firstly decide the type of festival you are interested in. For example, in Spring they have the Hanami festivals (sakura viewing festival), in summer they have Hanabi festivals (firework festival), the lantern festivals, or snow festivals etc. Then choose a local town or not so touristy city where you want to visit, followed by the year. So for example, if I want to learn about the firework festival in Mie prefecture, I would translate "firework Mie 2023" to japanese using google translate and then search using that phrase. You can finally google translate the resulting website if any relevant result pops out.

Answer 2

Try Omatsuri Japan: https://omatsurijapan.com/search/list/

You can search by region, by date, or by both. Japanese only, I'm afraid, but Google Translate works OK.

This still lists only major-ish events, the type tourists might travel to visit. For the really local neighborhood temple stuff you'll need to check with a local tourism bureau or ask at your accommodations.