A Festival That Has Run for Over a Thousand Years

Gion Matsuri began in 869 as a ritual to appease the gods during a plague that was sweeping the capital. Sixty-six halberds were erected in Shinsen-en garden, one for each province of Japan at the time, and the portable shrines of Yasaka Shrine were carried through the streets in prayer. The plague eventually passed. The festival did not stop. It has been held every July since, interrupted only twice in its history: once during the Onin War in the fifteenth century, and once during the Pacific War. Both times, Kyoto brought it back.

The floats themselves are the reason people travel from every continent to stand on Oike-dori in July heat. The largest hoko floats are assembled without a single nail, using a technique called nawanai, where thick rope binds the timber frame together. The decorative tapestries draped over the floats include sixteenth-century Flemish and Persian textiles, acquired through trade routes that passed through Sakai port. Some of these hangings are designated national treasures. They go out in the rain every July regardless.

The Ato-matsuri rear procession was suspended for 491 years and only fully restored in 2014, when the last of the dormant floats was revived by a neighbourhood association that had spent decades fundraising and relearning the construction techniques from old documents. That restoration is still recent enough that the people who led it are still around. When you watch the Ato-matsuri floats on July 24, you are watching something that was nearly lost and was deliberately brought back.