Gion Matsuri

The festival traces itself to 869, when an epidemic swept the capital Heian-kyō. A goryōe, a rite to pacify angry spirits believed to cause disease, was held at the Shinsen-en garden, and 66 halberds were raised, one for each province of Japan. The deity addressed was Gozu Tennō, a plague god identified with the Shinto deity Susanoo, who is enshrined at Yasaka Shrine – then called Gion-sha, the name the district and the festival still carry.

Over the following centuries the rite passed into the hands of Kyoto's townspeople. By the Muromachi period wealthy merchant neighbourhoods were competing with ever more splendid floats. The Ōnin War (1467–1477) destroyed much of the city and stopped the festival for more than three decades; its revival in 1500 was a statement of the townspeople's own resilience, and the neighbourhood-based organisation that emerged then still runs the floats today.

Hoko are the giants: two-storey wooden towers on four large wheels, with a pole rising far above the roof, the whole weighing up to around twelve tonnes. Musicians ride inside and play the slow, repetitive Gion-bayashi on flutes, drums and small bells. Yama are lighter and usually carried or pushed, each crowned by a pine tree or a tableau of figures from legend or history.

The floats are assembled each year from scratch without nails, their timbers lashed with rope in a technique called nawagarami. After the procession they are taken apart again within hours. Pulling a hoko requires dozens of men; at street corners the float is turned by laying split bamboo under the wheels and dragging it round in a manoeuvre called tsuji-mawashi.

The rhythm of the month is fixed. The order of the floats is decided by drawing lots at Kyoto City Hall in early July, though some floats have fixed places. Around 10 July the floats begin to be built in the streets; the portable shrines (mikoshi) are ritually washed in the Kamo River the same evening.

The evenings before each procession, called yoiyama, are when most local people experience the festival: the floats stand lit by paper lanterns, the music plays, and old merchant houses along the route open their front rooms to display screens and heirlooms, a custom called byōbu matsuri. On the evening of 17 July the deities of Yasaka Shrine are carried in three mikoshi to a temporary shrine on Shijō Street, and on the evening of 24 July they return.

Until the 1960s the processions were held on two separate days, as tradition required; from 1966 they were merged into one great procession on 17 July. In 2014 the historical form was restored, with the saki-matsuri (first festival) on 17 July and the ato-matsuri (later festival) on 24 July. The route runs east along Shijō Street, north up Kawaramachi and west along Oike in the first procession, and in the reverse direction in the second.

The procession of 17 July is the larger and draws the biggest crowds; the 24 July procession, together with the Hanagasa procession of flower-hatted dancers and children, is somewhat quieter. Both begin in the morning.

Kyoto is at its hottest and most humid in July, and the yoiyama evenings in particular are extremely crowded, with the main streets closed to traffic. Many visitors find the days between the lot-drawing and the yoiyama, when the floats are being assembled and the music is rehearsed, the most rewarding time to look closely.

Parts of some floats can be boarded on yoiyama evenings; by long custom, several hoko do not admit women to their upper decks, a rule that some neighbourhoods have relaxed. Reserved seating along the procession route is sold by the city's tourism bodies.