Kamakura Hachimangu Grand Festival & Yabusame

Tsurugaoka Hachimangū's three-day grand festival, the shrine's most important annual rite, commemorates a purification and archery ceremony first performed in 1187 under Minamoto no Yoritomo. The festival closes on its final day with yabusame — mounted archery performed by practitioners of the Ogasawara school at full gallop down the shrine's approach — a Kamakura-period military rite preserved as a Shinto ceremony.

Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, 2-1-31 Yukinoshita, Kamakura, Kanagawa. Ten minutes on foot from the east exit of JR Kamakura Station, served by the Yokosuka and Shonan-Shinjuku lines, and the same walk from the Enoden terminus on the west side; roughly an hour from Shinjuku and about 55 minutes from Tokyo Station. Entry to the shrine precinct is free and no ticketed or reserved viewing is advertised for the September yabusame, which is watched from the edges of the 250-metre course inside the grounds. The shrine has a small paid car park and its festival notices in previous years have warned that the prefectural roads either side of the Dankazura approach, around the second and third torii, become heavily congested while the mikoshi procession is out on 15 September, so rail is strongly preferred. As at 29 August 2026 the shrine had not yet published its 2026 festival timetable on its own site.