Donden Museum

The Donden Museum in Inuyama recreates the atmosphere of the city's annual spring festival, a tradition dating to 1635 and one of the oldest in the Chubu region. Several of the 13 festival floats, designated Important Tangible Folk Cultural Properties, are displayed inside a building whose narrow proportions echo the traditional warehouses where the floats are stored. Each float stands over eight meters tall and weighs around five tons. They are built without nails using traditional joinery, with three tiers: musicians below, karakuri puppet operators in the middle, and the puppets themselves at the top. After dark during the festival, 365 individual candle lanterns illuminate each float. The word donden refers to the difficult maneuver required to steer the floats around corners.