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Asakusa Samba Festival

When And Where

Held on the last Saturday in August, the Asakusa Samba Festival is a carnival that's perfect during a hot Tokyo summer. Accessible from Asakusa station on the Toei subway Asakusa Line, this is a day for chilling out and doing some truly spectacular Tokyo sightseeing.

About the Asakusa Samba Festival

This Tokyo style samba festival is a relatively new addition to the Japanese calendar. The first carnival was held on August 29, 1981 to celebrate the long standing ties between Brazil and Japan.

The location is the area surrounding Sensoji Temple, with an average attendance of around 500,000 people. It's an all day event with food stalls and sideshows dotted all along the route. Watch someone playing the shamisen or tuck into some typical Tokyo festival food like yakisoba.

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The Samba Dancers

There are usually 30 - 40 dance teams taking part in the Asakusa Samba Festival, with the winning team of the Rio de Janeiro carnival for the year also invited to take part. The dance teams are divided into 3 leagues. The top league is made up of all the professional dancers and musicians who will be competing during the Grand Parade.

The Grand Parade takes place around mid-afternoon, and is a spectacle of color, movement, and music. Many of the teams take on a theme and floats will be decorated with dancers and musicians on top and on the ground.

The other 2 leagues are regular folks who want to join in the costume and drama of the day. It's a no holds barred type of event where those with a flair for the glamorous have a chance to shine. For the spectators it's a day of eye candy and beauty.

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History of Japan and Brazil

In June 1908, 165 Japanese families made their way to the port of Santos near Sao Paulo, Brazil. Their aim was to make enough money to return to Japan in a few years with a better standard of living. As so often in life, their reason for going - work on the coffee plantations - was not as lucrative as hoped and return to Japan became impossible.

In 2008, Brazil has perhaps the largest population of Japanese outside Japan A total of 1.5 million Japanese live mainly in and around Sao Paulo and Parana. The city of Liberdade in Sao Paulo, literally freedom city, looks like a mini Tokyo rather than a South American city.

The Asakusa Samba Festival celebrates, in part, the success of these 165 families that first made the journey to Brazil. Through difficult times they established an accepted community that continues to grow and thrive today.