In summer, the most eagerly awaited events are the fireworks festivals. These festivals date back to the Edo period. Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune organised a Festival of Water Deities near the Ryogoku Bridge to ward off the crop failures and epidemics of the time. It is said that the first fireworks were set off on this occasion as an offering.
Today, fireworks displays are organised all over Japan during the month of August, many of them producing more than 10,000 explosions in the night sky.
