Summit hosts Suginami Hanagasa Festival

On December 8, 2018, Summit, a Sumitomo Corporation Group’s supermarket, held the 28th annual Suginami Hanagasa Festival at Ohmiya-Hachimangu shrine in Suginami-ku where Summit’s headquarter is located. The festival has been hosted since 1990 as a way of expressing the appreciation for the local community. Intended as a social contribution activity that links food, which is the main business of Summit, and cultural heritage, the event brings together the Tohoku region’s traditional soup dish imoni and Yamagata Prefecture’s traditional Hanagasa-odori dance.

This year’s festival included the iconic Hanagasa-odori parade, charity events that served imoni, and other dishes, and stalls selling vegetables and products from Yamagata Prefecture. Chanting dancers wearing traditional kimono and holding decorated hats, paraded the approach to the shrine, while visitors enjoyed browsing with imoni and Yamagata’s local sake in their hands. The event was also environmentally conscious, with organizers handing out original reusable shopping bags to visitors and making sure all trash was sorted appropriately.

“Thanks to the cooperation of everybody involved, the festival has truly grown into an event that the local community greatly enjoys every year. We hope to continuously improve it through various new ideas,” says Kurumatani from the marketing department of Summit.