Dates

Year	Dates	Reckoning	Notes
2025	May 16–18, 2025		The spirit-installing rite is held on the preceding evening, May 15, 2025.
2026	May 15–17, 2026		The spirit-installing rite is held on the preceding evening, May 14, 2026.

Recurrence: Gregorian rule: the third Friday, Saturday and Sunday of May (Asakusa Shrine).

Significance

Tokyo's largest Shinto festival, at Asakusa Shrine.

Kannamesai Calendar Event — Harvest festival at Ise Grand Shrine.
Jinja Mairi — Visiting the Shrine Devotion — To visit a shrine is to call on the kami of the place: through the torii, up the gravel path, to the offering box, the bell, two bows, two claps, one bow.
Misogi — Purification by Water Devotion — Standing under a waterfall, or in the sea or a river at dawn, the practitioner lets cold water carry away pollution: Shinto's most austere devotion.
The Kamidana — Household Altar Devotion — High on a wall of the home sits a miniature shrine: each morning it receives fresh water, rice, salt, and a bowed head with two claps.
Classical Japanese Language — The classical written language of Japan, in which the norito prayers and the early chronicles are composed.
Norito Prayer or Creed — Formal ritual prayers in classical Japanese, recited by priests to the kami at shrine festivals and rites.
Nuclear power Technology — The reactor judged apart from the bomb: prudence, waste, and descendants on one side of the ledger, decarbonization arithmetic on the other — and no magisterium with a binding word.
Shinto Tradition & Science — A tradition without a creed for science to contradict: kami in the landscape, a shrine rebuilt on schedule for thirteen centuries as a living school of craft, and modern flashpoints in nuclear pollution and the definition of death.