Yamagata Hanagasa Flower Hat Dance Festival & Fukushima Soma Nomaoi Armored Samurai Cavalry Festival

Completing the quartet of Tohoku’s Four Great Summer Festivals every August 5–7, the **Yamagata Hanagasa Matsuri** transforms the boulevards of Yamagata City leading up to the Renaissance-style Bunshokan hall into a swirling sea of crimson flowers. Over 10,000 dancers across more than 100 troupes brandish *Hanagasa*—woven sedge hats adorned with vibrant red-orange *Benibana* (safflower blossoms, Yamagata’s prized Edo-period dye crop for imperial kimonos and geisha lip rouge). Moving to the booming pulse of *Hanagasa Taiko* drums and the folk melody *Hanagasa Ondo*, dancers twirl their flower hats in unison while crying out the infectious chant, *"Yassho, makasho!"* Along the Pacific coast of Fukushima Prefecture in Minamisoma and Soma unfolds one of the most extraordinary living martial pageants on Earth, dating back over 1,000 years to the 10th-century samurai lord Taira no Masakado: **Soma Nomaoi ("The Soma Wild Horse Chase")**. Over three days in late May, more than 400 local horsemen don ancestral samurai armor (*katchu*), horned helmets, and towering clan back-banners (*sashimono*), marching through town to the deep blasts of conch-shell trumpets (*horagai*) as if stepping straight out of a feudal battle scroll. The spectacle reaches its climax at the Hibari-gahara Festival Grounds with two heart-pounding cavalry events: **Katchu Keiba** (Armored Horse Racing), where ten fully armored samurai riders charge down a 1,000-meter dirt track at breakneck speed with clan banners snapping in the wind; and **Shinki Sodatsusen** (Battle for the Sacred Flags), where hundreds of mounted warriors surge across the field waving riding crops overhead to snatch sacred shrine silk banners shot high into the sky inside exploding fireworks.