The story
Hakata Dontaku in Fukuoka
Hakata Dontaku fills Fukuoka's streets each May 3 and 4 with costumed parade groups clapping wooden shamoji rice paddles, a tradition said to descend from a housewife who improvised with her kitchen tool during an early celebration. Tracing back to a 1179 New Year custom and later banned and revived under a Dutch-derived name, it draws roughly two million spectators.
Hakata Dontaku traces its earliest form to 1179, when a New Year celebration known as Matsubayashi honored the region's feudal lord and marked the turn of the year according to the old calendar, making it, by some accounts, one of the oldest continuously referenced festival traditions in Japan even though its modern form differs substantially from that early observance.