Hari-Kuyō (Kansai region, Japan)

Hari-Kuyō is the Japanese Buddhist and Shinto Festival of broken sewing needles, celebrated on February 8 in the Kantō region, but on December 8 in the Kyoto Prefecture and Kansai region. It is celebrated by women in Japan as a memorial to all the sewing needles broken in their service during the past year, and as an opportunity to pray for improved skills. It is also called the Needle Mass and Pin Festival. "Hari" means "needle" and the suffix "-kuyo" means "memorial", derived from a Sanskrit word pūjā or pūjanā, meaning "to bring offerings".

The Kansai region or the Kinki region lies in the southern-central region of Japan's main island Honshū. The region includes the prefectures of Nara, Wakayama, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyōgo and Shiga, often also Mie, sometimes Fukui, Tokushima and Tottori. The metropolitan region of Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto is the second-most populated in Japan after the Greater Tokyo Area.

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asian mainland, it is bordered to the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea in the south. The Japanese archipelago consists of four major islands alongside 14,121 smaller islands, covering 377,975 square kilometers (145,937 sq mi). Divided into 47 administrative prefectures and eight traditional regions, about 75% of the country's terrain is mountainous and heavily forested, concentrating its agriculture and highly urbanized population along its eastern coastal plains. With a population of over 123 million as of 2025, it is the 11th most populous country. The country's capital and largest city is Tokyo.