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Yasaa!! Yasaa!! is a never-before-told chronicle of the Iwase Hikiyama Fighting Float Festival, from its inception to the present day.

The authors spent over half a decade interviewing and documenting the festival’s key participants, as well as the elders who hold knowledge of its past. This is the only known visual and written chronicle of the over-300-year-old Iwase Hikiyama Festival.

It was written by a lifelong resident of Iwase, together with an American expat who shares a deep fascination with this historic festival.

Meet the Authors

Eleven massive illuminated floats. Three centuries of tradition. Two nights of controlled chaos.

Hidden along the Sea of Japan in a historic port town, the Iwase Hikiyama Fighting Float Festival is one of Japan’s most extraordinary living traditions.

Each spring, enormous wooden floats blaze through the night, crashing through narrow streets and shaking the ground beneath the crowd. But beyond the collisions is something deeper: craftsmanship, teamwork, and generations of pride passed from father to son, neighbor to neighbor.

Yasaa!! Yasaa!! is the first definitive record of this festival, captured through rare photographs, oral histories, and firsthand documentation. It preserves a tradition rarely seen outside Japan: a story of impact, community, and the people who continue to pull the floats forward into the future.