Takayama Matsuri

The Sannō Matsuri in spring is held on 14 and 15 April and marks the start of the farming year with prayers for a good harvest. Its floats gather in the streets south of Yasugawa-dōri, the street that traditionally divides the old town into its two parishes.

The Hachiman Matsuri in autumn, on 9 and 10 October, gives thanks for the harvest. Its floats line the approach to Sakurayama Hachimangū in the northern part of the old town. Both festivals follow the same pattern of float displays, puppet performances, a daytime shrine procession and a night parade.

The floats in their present form developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Takayama's merchants, enriched by the timber trade of a domain ruled directly by the shogunate, competed to outdo one another. They combine the joinery of the Hida carpenters with metalwork, lacquer, sculpture and imported textiles.

Each float has a name, a crest and a keeper neighbourhood. When not in use, they are kept in tall, narrow storehouses (yatai-gura) scattered through the town, which are themselves a feature of Takayama's streetscape. A rotating selection of the autumn floats is shown year-round in the Takayama Yatai Kaikan exhibition hall at Sakurayama Hachimangū.

Several floats carry karakuri ningyō, mechanical puppets worked from inside the float by teams of puppeteers pulling dozens of strings. The performances take place in front of the shrines during the day and are among the festival's most admired moments: figures leap between swings, change masks or somersault across bars.

In spring, three floats stage karakuri performances; in autumn, the Hoteitai float presents the god Hotei with acrobatic child figures. Each performance lasts only a few minutes and is repeated at set points in the festival programme.

During the day, the shrine's deity travels through its parish in a mikoshi (portable shrine) accompanied by a long procession of several hundred people in period costume, with lion dancers, musicians and the tōkei-yakko retainers. The procession, known as gojunkō, is the religious core of the festival.

In the evening of the first day, the floats are hung with around a hundred paper lanterns each and pulled slowly through the old town in the yomatsuri (night festival), accompanied by chanted songs before returning to their storehouses. The lantern-lit night parade is the image most people associate with Takayama Matsuri.

Takayama Matsuri is traditionally counted among Japan's three great float festivals, alongside the Gion Matsuri of Kyoto and the Chichibu Night Festival. The float events were designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1979, and the floats themselves are registered as Important Tangible Folk Cultural Properties.

In 2016 the two Takayama festivals were inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity as part of the joint listing Yama, Hoko, Yatai, float festivals in Japan, which brings together 33 float festivals from across the country.

Takayama is reached by the JR Takayama Main Line from Nagoya or by bus from Matsumoto and Kanazawa; Shirakawa-gō lies about an hour away by bus. Accommodation in the town is heavily booked during both festivals, and many visitors stay in surrounding hot-spring areas. Float displays and karakuri performances can be cancelled in rain, since the floats are withdrawn into their storehouses to protect the lacquer and textiles.