Local authorities in the city of Gifu were on maximum alert Sunday as 460,000 people, more than the city's population, flocked to a festival to catch a glimpse of a celebrity dressed as a warlord on a horse.
The Gifu Nobunaga Festival went off mostly without a hitch, although three women had to be taken to the hospital with minor injuries. Strict crowd control measures were in place, with a deadly Halloween crush in Seoul, South Korea, still a fresh memory.
The two-day festival, which began Saturday, culminated Sunday with a parade of people dressed as samurai, led by actor Takuya Kimura on horseback and dressed as the 16th-century warlord Oda Nobunaga, who unified half of Japan's provinces under his rule.