Too Hot for Fireworks: Hiroshima Festival to Moves to Autumn

Is the summer fireworks festival, that quintessential fixture of the Japanese calendar, starting to wilt in the heat?

Fireworks and summer have been intertwined in the Japanese psyche since the age of the samurai. The first fireworks display on Tokyo’s Sumida River dates back to 1733, when the shogunate ordered it to console the spirits of those lost to a devastating famine and to ward off disease.

It’s always been hot in a Japanese summer, but a light cotton yukata, a paper fan, and a cup of shaved ice have traditionally been enough to make an evening of fireworks more than bearable. That calculus is changing. With summer temperatures climbing and heatstroke cases rising at outdoor events, cities across Japan are having to rethink how — and when — they hold their most beloved traditions.

Hiroshima is the latest to make the call. It’s just been announced that this weekend’s display at Hiroshima Port will be the last one held in the height of summer.

The Hiroshima Minato Yume Fireworks Festival has lit up the fourth Saturday of July every year since 2003. On July 22, however, the City of Hiroshima announced that, citing the growing risk of heatstroke among the crowds, it’s moving the event to the fourth Saturday of September starting in 2027. Since the sun sets earlier in autumn, the show will also start an hour earlier, at 7:00pm.

If you’re up for one last (very warm) hurrah, this year’s festival goes ahead as planned on Saturday, July 25, with around 10,000 shells lighting up the sky over Hiroshima Port from 8:00pm.

For a quieter, more contemplative alternative — or a nice way to bookend the night — head across the bay to Kirikushi on Etajima Island the same evening, where the Okagen-san festival sends straw boats decorated with paper streamers and lit candles drifting down the river, a tradition tied to Itsukushima Shrine’s centuries-old Kangensai rites. You can usually catch the port fireworks on the ferry back!