Koenji Awa Odori

Koenji Awa Odori, founded in 1957 by local shopkeepers seeking to revitalize their Tokyo neighborhood, adopted the dance and music of Tokushima's centuries-old Awa Odori tradition and has grown into Tokyo's largest Awa Odori festival. Held the last weekend of August, it draws nearly 1.2 million visitors to watch dozens of ren troupes perform in the narrow streets around Koenji Station.

Koenji Awa Odori began in 1957, when local shopkeepers in the Koenji neighborhood of Tokyo's Suginami ward organized a dance event intended to revitalize the area commercially, initially calling it Koenji Baka Odori, meaning the fools' dance, before it took on the more formal Awa Odori name borrowed directly from the four-century-old dance tradition of Tokushima, historically known as Awa Province.