The Sumida River Fireworks Festival, the big daddy of summer events in Tokyo, returned on July 29 in a blaze of glory, following a three-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fittingly, the annual event drew a record crowd of 1.035 million people, organizers said. It usually attracts over 900,000 visitors.
The fireworks were launched into the hot summer night by two barges anchored in the Sumidagawa river near the Asakusa district and the Tokyo Skytree tower.
The organizing committee comprises the Tokyo metropolitan government and five wards in local proximity.
The event's last time was in 2019, when it attracted 959,000 visitors. The pandemic was canceled from 2020 to 2022 due to the pandemic.
The festival resumed this year after the central government reclassified COVID-19 into the same category as seasonal flu in May, meaning there were no restrictions on attendees.
In Tokyo, a variety of celebrations have been generating record or near-record visitor numbers.
Organizers of the Sumidagawa event had anticipated bigger crowds this year and marshaled security guards and local neighborhood associations to help control the crowd.
The Toei subway network in Tokyo was coped with the surge of visitors, as Tokyo Metro Co. and Tokyo's Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation, which runs the Toei line, put on additional trains to cope with the surge.
Even so, many areas were heavily congested.