The Village That Builds a 272-Feet Snake Every Summer — And Why
Echigo Sekikawa "Taishitamon Jya" Snake Festival, Niigata Prefecture
In one small village on the Sea of Japan coast, summer ends with a snake. Not a small one — a bamboo-and-straw serpent measuring 82.8 meters (272 feet) long and weighing two tons, carried through the streets on the shoulders of hundreds of people. It holds a Guinness World Record as the longest snake ever built from bamboo and straw. And it exists nowhere else in Japan, because it was never meant to exist anywhere else.
It belongs entirely to Sekikawa Village.
A Village Without a Festival
Sekikawa is home to many small, local festivals — the kind tied to a single shrine or neighborhood, celebrated by the people who live closest to them. But for a long time, there was no festival that belonged to the whole village at once — nothing that pulled every resident, from every corner of Sekikawa, into a single shared celebration.
That changed through an unlikely origin: a local leadership program called "Sekikawa Furusato Juku," created to discover and develop community talent. Out of its discussions came an idea — build something new. Not to replace what already existed, but to give the village something it had never had: a reason for everyone to come together, rediscover what made their home worth living in, and take pride in it.
The result, first held in 1988, was the Taishitamon Jya Matsuri — the "Big Snake Festival."
Why 82.8 Meters?
The length is not arbitrary. On August 28, 1967 — written in Japan as 8/28 — the Uetsu Flood struck the region, taking many lives. To ensure that disaster was never forgotten by generations who hadn't lived through it, the village fixed the snake's length at 82.8 meters, a physical, unmissable number carried through the streets once a year. It is, in effect, a monument that moves — history made visible, hoisted onto shoulders, paraded rather than merely remembered.
Fifty-Four Hands, One Snake
The serpent itself is a community-built object in the truest sense. Sekikawa Village is made up of 54 hamlets, and each one is responsible for weaving one segment of the snake's body from bamboo and straw. A separate team builds the head. When festival day arrives, all 54 segments are joined together into a single, continuous creature — meaning the snake is, quite literally, assembled from a piece of every community in the village.
It takes roughly 500 people to lift and carry it.
Festival Night
The Big Snake Parade — the festival's centerpiece — takes place every year on the last Sunday of August. The evening before, fireworks light up the night sky over the village, building anticipation for the procession to come. On parade day, the massive snake winds through Sekikawa's streets, carried shoulder to shoulder by residents and visitors alike, in a scene that is as much a display of community strength as it is spectacle.
A Record, and a Recognition
In June 2001, the snake was officially certified by Guinness World Records as "the world's longest snake made of bamboo and straw" — a title Sekikawa has held ever since, with a new snake rebuilt every few years as the previous ones are retired to museums and public displays around the region.
The recognition hasn't stopped there. In 2024, marking the village's 70th anniversary, the festival was certified as a "NIPPON Disaster Prevention Asset" — an acknowledgment of its role in preserving disaster memory — and received the Suntory Regional Culture Award, one of Japan's most respected honors for community-driven cultural activity.
More Than a Festival
What makes the Taishitamon Ja Matsuri remarkable isn't only its scale — it's what the scale represents. This is not a festival staged for spectators. It is a festival built, quite literally, by hand, by every part of a village, in memory of a disaster that shaped it, and in celebration of a community that decided, deliberately, to become one.
For travelers seeking something beyond Japan's well-known festival circuit, Sekikawa offers a rare kind of authenticity: an event where the entire village — not a performance troupe, not a professional crew — is both the maker and the meaning of the celebration.
The festival takes place annually on the last Sunday of August, with fireworks the evening before. For travel agencies and tour operators interested in including this experience in a Niigata itinerary, inquiries are welcome.
2027 : Aug 27 to 29th
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