How Lucky Star Turned a Saitama Shrine Into Anime Tourism's Origin Story

An opening sequence

Lucky Star started as a four-panel manga in Comptiq in January 2004. When Kyoto Animation's TV adaptation premiered in April 2007, its opening showed the torii of Washinomiya Shrine and the Otori Chaya beside it, next to Kagami Hiiragi, one of the four friends at the center of the show. A few fans noticed and started visiting quietly.

In July 2007, Newtype's August issue named Washinomiya Shrine as a setting, and fans arrived in numbers. They took photos, they cosplayed, and they filled the shrine's racks with ema, the wooden votive plaques sold at shrines, covered in character drawings. National media covered the crowds, the costumes and ema with messages like "Konata is my wife."

The town picks up the phone

Here's what made Washinomiya different. In September 2007, instead of putting up "no fans" signs, the Washimiya Commerce and Industry Association contacted the publisher, Kadokawa, with a proposal to work together.

On December 2, 2007, the association held "Lucky Star Brunch & Official Visit in Washimiya," and about 3,500 people came. The next day, 17 local shops started selling 1,000 ema-shaped phone straps. They sold out in about half an hour.

The New Year that followed was the proof. Over January 1 to 3, 2008, the shrine counted about 300,000 visitors, up from about 90,000 the year before. By 2010 it was around 450,000, second in Saitama Prefecture.

Six new residents

On April 1, 2008, the town of Washimiya registered the Hiiragi family, all six characters, as special residents. Commemorative resident certificates went on sale on April 7, and all 10,000 were gone by August 9.

A mikoshi of their own

The Lucky Star mikoshi, a portable shrine decorated for the series, debuted at the 26th Hajisai festival on September 7, 2008, carried by about 120 fans. Hajisai's crowd grew from about 30,000 to 50,000 that year. The mikoshi traveled, too: in June 2010 it performed in Shanghai during the World Expo.

Setbacks

Not everything went smoothly. In July 2013, a gust of wind toppled the mikoshi on display at Washinomiya Station, ending its permanent station display. In July 2018, Hajisai was cancelled in mourning for the head of its organizing association, and the mikoshi moved to the shrine's Yasaka Festival instead. That August, the shrine's great torii collapsed from age, though nobody was hurt. Then COVID-19 cancelled the Yasaka Festival three years running, from 2020 to 2022.

A second act

A rebuilt great torii was unveiled on December 3, 2021. A life-size statue of Tsukasa Hiiragi went up outside Washimiya Post Office on December 18, 2022; her voice actor, Kaori Fukuhara, has been a Kuki goodwill ambassador since 2021. In December 2023, the manga's 20th-anniversary ceremony had author Kagami Yoshimizu join the mikoshi performance.

And on July 26, 2026, fans carried the Lucky Star mikoshi along the shrine approach again.

Why it mattered

Washinomiya wasn't the first place fans ever went looking for, but it's where a town, a shrine and a publisher worked out that fans could be guests rather than a nuisance. A lot of what came after, from Oarai's shop panels to Numazu's ambassadors, follows a version of that playbook.

If you go, read our Washinomiya guide first, bring coins for an ema, and draw something nice.