By HIROKI MATSUZAWA/ Staff Writer
April 8, 2022 at 07:00 JST
The Hakata Dontaku Port Festival parade was last held in early May 2019 (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
FUKUOKA--To mark the advent of early summer, the Hakata Dontaku Port Festival, last held three years ago before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, is going ahead in early May during the waning days of the Golden Week holiday period.
The parade will take place May 3-4 in the city’s Hakata Ward, according to the Fukuoka Citizen’s Festival Promotion Association.
The festival was last held in 2019, and plans to hold it in 2020 and the following year were canceled due to the public health scare.
The association said it greenlit the parade because pre-emergency measures that had been in place were lifted in Fukuoka Prefecture on March 6 as cases of novel coronavirus infection were dropping.
As a precaution against the spread of the virus, the parade will be two hours shorter than usual on both dates, and numbers of participating groups and performers will be halved.
Participants will be urged to wear face masks and disinfect their hands and fingers.
Spectators will be urged to watch the parade online.
“Hakata is nothing without the festival. We want to use it as a driving force for the community to regain its vitality,” said Hiromichi Tanigawa, head of the association, at a March 15 news conference.
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