Photos: Nekosuki · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Olivier Bruchez · CC BY-SA 2.0 (2, 3, 4, 5)
Kasuga Taisha holds about 3,000 stone and bronze lanterns given by worshippers over a millennium. It lights all of them on only two occasions a year: Setsubun Mantōrō, on the day of Setsubun in early February from 18:00, and Chūgen Mantōrō, on 14 and 15 August from 19:00.
Why it's unique
Lantern festivals are common in Japan. A single shrine lighting its whole historic lantern stock, a thousand years of donations, on two nights a year is not.
This is a country-level claim, not a world one: what makes it singular is the size and age of the collection, and the fact that you see all of it alight at once.
Before you go
The bronze hanging lanterns in the corridors are the photograph; the stone ones along the approach are the walk.
In autumn 2026 the shrine is also running night visits where you can dedicate a light to one of the corridor lanterns yourself, which is the year-round version of the same thing.
