Hida Furukawa Festival 2027: The Night the Drum Comes Out

Most UNESCO float festivals in central Japan ask you to admire the carpentry. This one does that all day — then at half past eight at night it sends a drum out into the streets of a cold mountain town to be attacked until midnight. Every objective detail below comes from Hida City, the tourism association, the exhibition hall, the prefecture, the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the railway.

Written by Yuu — a Nagoya native of 35 years. Published August 15, 2026.

This article may contain affiliate links. See our affiliate disclosure for details.

All festival details verified from official sources on August 15, 2026.

---

On this page

1. What do you need to know in one minute?
2. What is the Hida Furukawa Festival?
3. When is it in 2027, and what happened in 2026?
4. What actually happens at the okoshi-daiko?
5. What should you look for in the floats?
6. How do you get to Hida-Furukawa?
7. What should you know before you go?
8. What do visitors actually see there?
9. Frequently asked questions
10. Where can you check official information?
11. Related guides

---

What Do You Need to Know in One Minute?

Furukawa Matsuri runs 19 and 20 April every year, on those dates whatever the weekday. The 19th is the eve, ending with the okoshi-daiko night drum from about 20:30 to midnight. The 20th is the main day, when the floats line up. The festival streets start about five minutes on foot from JR Hida-Furukawa Station; the shrine itself is a fourteen-minute walk.

---

What Is the Hida Furukawa Festival?

It is the reisai, the principal annual festival, of Keta Wakamiya Shrine. The Agency for Cultural Affairs registers it as “Furukawa Matsuri no Okoshi-daiko / Yatai Gyoji” — the drum and the floats named together, because the festival is deliberately built out of a loud half and a quiet half.

The place explains it. Hida-Furukawa is a small castle town in the mountains of northern Gifu, seventeen minutes north of Takayama on the same line: a grid of old merchant streets and white-walled storehouses along the Setogawa canal, where the city’s tourism site says the carp swim from April to November — they return from their wintering pond in early April, so they are back in the water by festival time.

Three designations sit on this festival and are worth keeping apart. The event became an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property on 28 January 1980, with the Furukawa Matsuri Preservation Society as holder body. In 2016 it joined the UNESCO Representative List — not alone, but as one component of Yama, Hoko, Yatai, float festivals in Japan; Takayama City, in the same bundle, dates the decision to 1 December 2016 and puts the entry at 33 nationally designated festivals at the time of inscription. And separately, on 11 August 1970, the nine surviving floats were designated an Important Tangible Folk Cultural Property of Gifu Prefecture, per the prefecture’s cultural heritage division.

Why this is not the Takayama Festival

This trips up a lot of visitors. The Takayama Festival is a different festival in a different city: its spring half belongs to Hie Shrine in Takayama, falls on 14 and 15 April, and fields twelve floats. Furukawa Matsuri belongs to Keta Wakamiya Shrine in Hida City on 19 and 20 April, with nine. Both sit inside the same UNESCO entry and are seventeen minutes apart by train — easy to conflate, and not hard to see in the same week.

How old is it, and why I will not give you a number

Here the official record fights itself, so I am going to leave the starting year open. The exhibition hall’s FAQ prints a founding year whose Western and Japanese-era halves do not convert to each other; Hida City’s 2026 press release manages “more than three hundred years” in one paragraph and “four hundred years” in another. What is solid: the festival grew after 1692, when Hida became tenryo, land held directly by the shogunate; the oldest float building record is 1776, and by 1782 nine floats were being pulled; and the okoshi-daiko is first recognised in writing in 1831.

The idea underneath it

One paragraph on the exhibition hall’s site explains the shape of the whole thing. Hida festivals are not about going up to the shrine to worship: the parish deity comes down from the mountain shrine into the town once a year, and the festival exists to feed it and keep it entertained while it is here. That is why the mikoshi procession is the spine of the two days, with the floats and the drum attached to it rather than the other way round — and why, as the mikoshi approaches, residents lay a line of salt down the middle of the road and branch it to their own front doors so the deity will come in. It used to be red earth from the hills, until paving made that dirty and slippery.

---

When Is the Hida Furukawa Festival 2027, and What Happened in 2026?

19 and 20 April 2027, which fall on a Monday and a Tuesday. Hida City states the fixed-date rule outright, so the dates are safe to plan around — but the 2027 timetable, route and traffic plan have not been published, and 2026’s numbers were flattered by a Sunday.

The date rule, in the city’s own words

Most Japanese festivals that look fixed are actually pinned to a weekend. This one is not: Hida City’s 2026 press release gives the dates and then adds, in brackets, the fixed dates of 19 and 20 April every year. The tourism association and Gifu Prefecture say the same in the same words.

So 2027 is Monday 19 and Tuesday 20 April — two working days back to back. That cuts both ways: rooms in Hida-Furukawa and Takayama should be easier to get than in 2026 and the crowd on the night of the 19th thinner, but you will be spending two weekdays of your own to see it.

As of 15 August 2026 no official page carries a 2027 timetable, drum route, road-closure plan or parking list. That is normal. The 2026 pattern: early March, the chusen-sai lottery rite assigns the year’s duties (1 March — okoshi-daiko to the Byakko group, floats to Kirin-tai, both changing every year); late March, the city’s press release (31 March); early April, the pamphlet PDF with the route, timetable, closures and car parks (3 April). Every published time carries a caveat that it is an estimate.

The 2026 schedule, as a shape for 2027

Times will change; the structure has not.

2026 in numbers

Both daytimes were clear, nine floats went through the streets, and 55,000 people came over the two days — about 35,000 of them for the okoshi-daiko on the 19th, a turnout Hida City credits to the Sunday timing in as many words. Rain arrived late on the 20th and cut the night procession short. For comparison the exhibition hall calls about 50,000 over two days a normal year. With 2027 on a Monday and Tuesday, I would not plan on 2026’s numbers repeating.

---

What Actually Happens at the Okoshi-Daiko?

A turret carrying a drum 80 cm across is shouldered through the streets by men stripped to white sarashi cloth. Twelve teams carrying small drums lashed to 3.5-metre poles try to force their way to the position closest to the big drum. It runs from about 20:30 to midnight, and you watch it from the pavement.

The name means “waking drum,” and that is literally what it was: both the tourism association and Hida City trace the origin to a mezamashi-daiko or fure-daiko (目覚まし太鼓／触れ太鼓), beaten round the town at dawn to announce that the festival had started. What happened in Furukawa is that the drum got bigger and the competition to get near it got serious.

The cast, and the numbers

• The drummers — two “upper” and two “side” taiko-uchi sit astride the drum, changing over four times through the night, so sixteen people get the role in a given year. They come from the district that drew the okoshi-daiko duty at the March lottery; it is a once-in-a-lifetime honour, and each man cuts a living willow branch and shapes his own beaters, curved so he can play standing upright.
• The soutsukasa (総司) — the man in overall charge, riding at the front of the turret and giving the opening address. Beside him the hon’e signals the direction of travel with a paper lantern.
• The tsuke-daiko (付け太鼓) — twelve groups, each with a small drum bearing its district’s crest, lashed with hemp rope to a pole 3.5 metres long. Getting closest to the turret is the honour being fought over.
• The men — the exhibition hall says about a thousand, all from the town’s own districts; the tourism association says “several hundred.” Both are official and are probably counting different moments.
• The lanterns — women of the duty district carry red-and-white maruko lanterns at the front, more than a thousand of them, a band of light leading the drum through the dark.

Where to stand, and one warning

The exhibition hall is unusually specific: the best of the tsuke-daiko fighting happens at the crossroads on Ichinomachi between the two sake breweries, Kaba Shuzojo (蒲酒造場) and Watanabe Sake Brewery (渡辺酒造店). Check the route map, get ahead of the drum and wait at a junction — the charges come in sideways out of the side streets, not from behind. And note the standing warning that the route changes every year. From around 18:00, men work the streets shouting their group’s name and performing tonbo: standing the 3.5-metre pole upright and climbing it.

Two official sentences belong together. The exhibition hall answers “does anyone get hurt?” with: serious injuries are surprisingly rare, because the discipline of a rite holds. The pamphlet’s rules say: we cannot accept responsibility if you are injured watching the okoshi-daiko or the tsuke-daiko. Stand back from the middle of the road.

---

What Should You Look For in the Floats?

Ten groups, nine surviving floats, all nine designated by Gifu Prefecture in 1970. Two carry karakuri marionettes, one carries children’s kabuki, and one has no roof at all. On the 20th they line up together; on the 19th they stay in their own districts.

Count carefully here, because official sources count differently and both are right. There are ten float groups and nine floats: the tenth, Sanbaso-tai, lost most of its float in the great Furukawa fire of 1904, and the group now walks carrying its name-banner on a pole. So the tourism association’s “ten floats” and Hida City’s “nine floats paraded” are both true, about different things.

One caution about that table: two official sources disagree about which float is oldest — the exhibition hall gives it to Kinki-tai, Gifu Prefecture to Byakko-tai, and the two do not agree on the construction dates either. So I have listed only the 1776 building record the exhibition hall keeps for Kinki-tai, and left the superlative alone.

The two karakuri, and the kabuki

Only Kirin-tai and Seiryu-tai carry karakuri, string puppets — ito-karakuri — worked by a dedicated preservation society: twenty strings and eight operators for Kirin-tai, twenty-five strings for Seiryu-tai. If you have seen the karakuri at Inuyama Festival, the resemblance is no coincidence; the exhibition hall describes these floats as forms brought from Edo, raised by Hida carpenters and joined by karakuri technique out of Kyoto.

The children’s kabuki belongs to Byakko-tai: Hashi Benkei, with local children as Ushiwakamaru and Benkei on the stage built into the float’s middle tier. It had lapsed for more than a hundred and ten years and was revived in 1984 during the float’s three-year restoration.

Two details are worth watching for. Furukawa’s floats turn corners on a modoshi-guruma (戻し車), a pivot wheel dropped at the back so the rear wheels lift and the float spins on three points; where overhead wires get in the way the crew simply lifts them out of the road with poles. And in the mikoshi procession there is tokeiraku (闘鶏楽), gong-and-drum music meant to soothe the deity, played by young people in flat ichimonji-gasa hats and white robes dyed in red and navy with phoenixes and dragons — locals call it kankako-kan after the sound. The mikoshi itself was finished in 1872 and weighs about a tonne.

---

How Do You Get to Hida-Furukawa?

The Limited Express Hida runs direct from Nagoya to Hida-Furukawa in 2 hours 34 minutes with no change — ¥6,340 with a reserved seat. From Takayama it is 17 minutes and ¥240. The festival area starts about five minutes’ walk from the station, and driving is actively discouraged.

Rail figures come from JR Central’s own fare search, run in August 2026; the bus fare is from Nohi Bus’s own fare table.

The ticket that is worth the arithmetic

JR Central sells a Hida Area Free Kippu (飛騨路フリーきっぷ) at ¥12,370 from Nagoya city, valid three days: a reserved-seat round trip on the Hida plus unlimited travel on express, rapid and local trains inside the free zone — whose northern end is Hida-Furukawa itself. A plain reserved return is ¥12,680, so it is already cheaper before you have moved, and every hop to Takayama or Gero is then free. There is no child version, and it is blacked out from 27 April to 6 May, from 10 to 19 August and over new year — so 19 and 20 April fall outside the blackout. Our guide to rail passes in central Japan covers the wider alternatives. Note too that the Hida turns all-reserved for a few blocks each year: in the list JR Central has published for 2026 those are Golden Week, Obon, Silver Week and new year, none of them touching 19–20 April. The list is issued a year at a time, so check the 2027 one when it appears.

The thing nobody tells you about the Takayama Main Line is how thin the service gets north of Takayama. Hida-Furukawa is one stop and seventeen minutes further on, but the timetable past Takayama is a fraction of what feeds into it, and a missed connection there costs you an hour rather than ten minutes. I have ridden that stretch plenty of times without ever having been at the festival, and the advice holds either way: build the trip around the northbound departure you actually want, not around when you feel like leaving Nagoya.

On the night, and getting out

Extra trains run on the 19th only. In 2026 that stretched the last southbound from Hida-Furukawa to 23:54, arriving Takayama 00:11, with the last northbound from Takayama at 22:52; Nohi Bus added late services at a night surcharge, leaving Takayama as late as 23:40. Those are 2026 times — the 2027 special timetable comes with the pamphlet, and it is the detail most worth checking before you commit to watching the drum to the end. If you would rather not solve the logistics yourself, day tours from Nagoya into Hida run year-round.

---

What Should You Know Before You Go?

Come by train — the organisers say the car parks fill and ask visitors to use public transport. Dress for a cold mountain night. Do not expect to join in: the pamphlet says visitors cannot take part in the okoshi-daiko. And check the official site the morning of, because rain changes the programme.

You cannot take part, and the official wording is clear

Among the five rules for spectators on the 2026 pamphlet is this: visitors cannot take part in the okoshi-daiko. Participation is in principle limited to parishioners of Keta Wakamiya Shrine. One qualified exception: the exhibition hall’s FAQ says non-residents have in some years walked with residents in the maruko lantern procession, and directs you to the tourism association on 0577-74-1192 to ask about a given year. Permission with conditions, not an invitation. The rest of the list: follow the police and fire brigade; no photographing while walking; no responsibility accepted for spectator injury; expect heavy crowds and watch for pickpockets.

Dress for it, and know what rain does

The exhibition hall’s advice on the departure rite is two sentences and both are useful: it gets very crowded so leave yourself time, and it is cold every year, so dress warmly. You will be standing still outdoors in the mountains from before eight until whenever you give up. Our guide to when to visit covers the region’s seasons, but treat mid-April in Hida as a different climate from mid-April on the plain.

On rain the tourism association answers directly, which is rarer than it should be. In the rain the float line-up is cancelled; the okoshi-daiko goes ahead anyway. The children’s kabuki and the karakuri move inside the float storehouses. In 2026 both daytimes were clear and evening rain on the 20th cut the night procession short — the programme bends rather than breaks.

Driving, and why not to

The tourism association’s own words: the car parks get extremely congested, some will fill at some hours, and we recommend public transport. If you drive anyway, 2026 had the station east car park open all day both days; temporary lots at Furukawa Elementary (19th 9:00 to 20th 20:00), Furukawa Junior High and the Training Centre beside it (19th 13:00 to 20th 20:00, with a free shuttle to the city hall on the 19th only) and Alps Pharmaceutical (19th 9:00–24:00); and the Culture Centre and city hall lots opening to everyone on the 20th.

Drivers are asked to keep strictly to the posted hours (lots close outside them), follow the signs and marshals, expect to be sent further out if the near lots are full, and not to park on the street; the organisers accept no liability for anything that happens in a car park. No capacities or charges are published, so I will not guess. Road closures in 2026 ran 08:00 on the 19th to 21:00 on the 20th on the main band, with three further bands from 19:30 on the 19th running to 22:30, 24:30 and 25:00; the 20th was restricted too, and closures are sometimes lifted early.

On the ground

• Food — the Jimoto de Umaimon Ichi market beside Ohyokocho park ran 12:00–21:00 on the 19th and 12:00–18:00 on the 20th in 2026: grilled river fish, gohei-mochi, ramen, craft beer and local sake. Three dishes traditional to the festival table are sold year-round in town — tempura manju, gisei-yaki and mame-tsukage.
• Facilities — the official map marks first-aid posts, toilets, accessible toilets, tourist information and the float storehouses, but gives no addresses.
• The exhibition hall — Hida Furukawa Festival Exhibition Hall keeps three of the real floats on permanent display, rotated before and after the festival. ¥700 adults, ¥300 children; open 9:00–17:00 March to November.

---

What Do Visitors Actually See There?

I have not been to this one, so instead of inventing a night in the crowd, here is where to see it through other people’s cameras — and what the official language quietly gives away about the scale.

• Hida City’s own PR film, “Kurashi Ibuku Kono Machi ni” on the official Hida City channel — the city says the festival footage starts at 4:46.
• Hida City Tourism Association: @hida_kankou_official on Instagram, @TourismHida on X.
• Hida Furukawa Festival Exhibition Hall: @hidafurukawamatsurikaikan on Instagram.
• The official hashtag for 2026 was #古川祭2026, printed on the pamphlet itself — the cleanest way to find current-year photographs from people who were standing there.

On how it feels, read the official documents rather than a review aggregator, because the organisers give more away than they mean to. The exhibition hall tells you the okoshi-daiko is badly congested and to set out early, but that the float procession can be enjoyed at a walk. And it defines the local temperament with a word of its own, Furukawa yancha (古川やんちゃ): warm, headlong, single-minded, holding the town together through the festival. Nobody writes a paragraph defining their own town’s stubbornness unless the festival really is the axis the year turns on.

---

Frequently Asked Questions

When is the Hida Furukawa Festival 2027?

The festival is fixed to 19 and 20 April every year, whatever the weekday, and Hida City says so in as many words. That makes 2027 Monday 19 and Tuesday 20 April, two working days. The 2027 timetable itself has not been published yet.

What is the okoshi-daiko and what time does it start?

It is the night drum on the 19th. A departure rite is held at the festival plaza from 20:00, the drum is launched around 20:30 with a mass chorus of a celebratory song, and the procession works through the streets until just after midnight. In 2026 the published schedule ran 20:30 to 24:00 with four rest stops.

Can visitors take part in the okoshi-daiko at Furukawa Matsuri?

No. The official pamphlet states plainly that visitors cannot take part, and participation is in principle limited to parishioners of Keta Wakamiya Shrine. The lantern procession at the front is opened to non-residents in some years, so ring the Hida City Tourism Association on 0577-74-1192 to ask about a given year.

How do I get to the Hida Furukawa Festival from Nagoya?

JR Central’s own search gives a direct Limited Express Hida from Nagoya to Hida-Furukawa in 2 hours 34 minutes with no change, at ¥6,340 with a reserved seat or ¥5,610 unreserved. Local trains only cost ¥3,410 but take four and a half to six hours. The festival area is about five minutes on foot from the station.

Is the Hida Furukawa Festival the same as the Takayama Festival?

No, they are separate festivals in separate cities. The spring Takayama Festival is the annual festival of Hie Shrine in Takayama on 14 and 15 April, with twelve floats. Furukawa Matsuri belongs to Keta Wakamiya Shrine in Hida City on 19 and 20 April. They are 17 minutes apart by train and five days apart on the calendar.

What happens at the Hida Furukawa Festival if it rains?

The tourism association’s own FAQ is unusually direct: in the rain the float line-up is cancelled, but the okoshi-daiko goes ahead anyway. The children’s kabuki and the karakuri puppets can be watched inside the float storehouses instead. In 2026 rain cut the night float procession on the 20th short.

How crowded does the Hida Furukawa Festival get, and is there an admission charge?

Hida City counted 55,000 people across the two days in 2026, about 35,000 of them for the okoshi-daiko alone; the exhibition hall calls 50,000 a normal year. No official source lists an admission charge, and none states that entry is free either, so plan on the festival being free to watch but do not take that from me as a guarantee.

---

Where Can You Check Official Information?

Five sources cover this festival properly. Only the tourism association publishes the year’s pamphlet — the route, the timetable, the road closures and the special trains — so check that one last.

• Hida City Tourism Association (飛騨市観光協会): hida-kankou.jp — Furukawa Matsuri, plus the year’s feature page at features/204 carrying the schedule, parking, special-train timetable and the pamphlet PDF. Enquiries 0577-74-1192
• Hida Furukawa Festival Exhibition Hall (飛騨古川まつり会館): okosidaiko.com — the deepest explanation of the rite, the floats and the customs, with a detailed FAQ and a full English version. 0577-73-3511
• Hida City (飛騨市): city.hida.gifu.jp — its news section is where attendance figures and after-the-fact reports go up, usually within two days. Tourism division 0577-73-2111
• Gifu Prefecture: the tourism site’s Furukawa Matsuri page and the heritage division’s record of the nine designated floats
• Agency for Cultural Affairs: the Cultural Heritage Online entry

One note on how these pages behave. Between festivals the feature page still carries the previous year’s schedule, and the pamphlet PDF is replaced rather than dated in the visible text. If the page you are reading names a weekday for the 19th, check it matches your travel year.

---

Related Guides

• Takayama Festival — the other Hida float festival, and the one people mean when they say “the Takayama festival.” Spring half is 14–15 April, five days before this one
• Central Japan Festival Calendar — every major festival in the region, month by month
• Inuyama Festival — another April UNESCO float festival, an hour from Nagoya, with karakuri on all thirteen floats
• Konomiya Hadaka Matsuri — if the okoshi-daiko is what draws you, Aichi’s February naked festival is the other end of the same impulse
• Takayama and Shirakawa-go Day Trip — how the rest of Hida fits together if you are already this far north
• Gero Onsen — on the same line back towards Nagoya, inside the Hida Area Free Kippu zone