Nipppombashi Street Festa regularly draws over 200,000 people to city’s Denden Town neighborhood, but not this year.

As you might expect, Japan has a lot of cosplay events, but few can match the scale of Osaka’s Nippombashi Street Festa. Unlike events held inside a convention center or other indoor venues, Street Festa, as its name implies, takes place on the streets of Osaka’s Denden Town electronics district, the biggest otaku gathering point in central Japan.

With street traffic shut down for the event’s cosplay parade and no charged admission for spectators, Street Festa draws some 200,000 people in a typical year, and in 2015 brought roughly 250,000 cosplay fans to the neighborhood.

However, the event’s organizers have sent out a notice that this year’s Street Festa, which was scheduled to take place on Sunday, March 15, has been cancelled. The reason? Concerns about the continuing coronavirus situation.

Street Festa’s festivities have huge numbers of people standing in close proximity to one another for extended periods of time, conditions that could lead to transmission of the virus should a carrier be present. Making things especially worrisome is that March is the height of cedar pollen allergy season in Japan. With hayfever symptoms having some similarities to those for early-onset pneumonia, it could be especially difficult to notice dangerous conditions, especially with Japan’s ongoing nationwide shortage of surgical masks.