Tohoku Rokkon Festival

Re-designing the six major festivals of Tohoku region

Abstract

Ever since the Tohoku earthquake, the entire northern Japan suffered a drastic decline in tourism that devastated the local economy.
Hoping to regain its popularity, we decided to put together the local summer festivals from all six Tohoku prefectures (Aomori Nebuta, Akita Kanto, Morioka Sansa Odori, Yamagata Hanagasa, Sendai Tanabata, and Fukushima Waraji) and re-integrated them into one big event called Tohoku Rokkon Festival.
Paying tribute to the united spirit momentum created by the strong team play within various cities of Tohoku area, city of Sendai was able to host this first of its kind festival successfully in July 2011, being only within four months since the earthquake. Followed by Morioka 2012, Fukushima 2013 and Yamagata 2014, 1,110,000 people in total visited this festival. The festival played significant role in bringing back visitors to the original festival as well.