Summer in Japan’s coastal and low-lying regions, including Tokyo and Kyoto, can be miserably hot and humid, but it is also an opportunity to experience the mind-over-matter tactics traditionally deployed by the Japanese to help make the season more bearable.
The heat of summer brings with it lovely treats: wind chimes whose delicate tinkling renders audible each cooling breeze, glasses of mugicha (cold tea of roasted barley), chilled towels offered at restaurants to refresh your hot brow, and mounds of shaved ice doused with matcha syrup. Just ask for Uji-gori, named after Uji, the famed tea-growing region south of Kyoto. Delicious!
In Kyoto, people celebrate the discomforts of summer by dining in the open air along the banks of the Kamogawa. Downing a cold beer surrounded by lively chatter and romantic lantern light while listening to river rush by is a wonderful exercise in feeling in harmony with the season.
The ultimate Kyoto summer experience is the Gion Matsuri, a magical time that is well worth the sweating involved. This is the festival of Yasaka Jinja, or "Gion-san" as it is fondly known, which lies at the east edge of the city. The history of most of Kyoto's temples and palaces is a history of aristocrats and warriors. The townsmen, however, have long kept a jealous hold on Gion-san and its summer festival.
The Gion Matsuri is renowned for its lavishly decorated floats, great wheeled structures encrusted with ornaments and richly draped with brocades and tapestries. Each carries a life-sized doll in which various deities reside.
The festival originated in the 9th century when halberds were carried to Shinsen-en pond south of the Imperial Palace and dipped into the waters as a supplication to end a plague. The famous floats first appeared in the Middle Ages. For a short period after the Ōnin Wars (1467-1477), the authorities tried to forbid the parade of floats, but the people defiantly held the festival anyway. That spirit of proud stewardship still burns fiercely in the hearts of Kyoto’s merchants.
The streets of Kyoto are alight with lantern-festooned floats on Gion Matsuri nights.
The lead float is called Naginata-boko (Halberd Float) in reference to the festival's origins. It is the only one that has an actual child, rather than a doll, for its deity. Today, there are 31 great hoko and yama floats, each built and maintained by the merchant neighborhoods that have vied with one another for centuries to provide the most magnificent vehicles. These floats are decorated with fabulous carvings and antique drapery, including Gobelin tapestries imported from France into Tokugawa Japan through Nagasaki.
The Gion Matsuri begins to ramp up on July 1, and hits its peak on the evenings of the 14th to the 16th—especially the 16th. On these nights, central Kyoto is jammed with pedestrians, many dressed in cotton yukata (summer “kimonos”), out to enjoy the lantern-festooned floats and listen to the musicians playing gongs, drums, and flutes. Families open up the fronts of their centuries-old homes to display their art treasures.
The jam-packed streets are lined with pushcarts selling a culinary wonderland of Japanese carnival treats: charcoal-grilled corn on the cob, squid on a stick, savory okonomiyaki pancakes and sweet bean paste-filled pastries shaped like fish (tai-yaki).
A formal parade of floats takes place on the morning of the 17th, staid in contrast to the energetic, sensory overload of the preceding evenings. The floats are hauled through the central boulevards of the city and, immediately afterward, disassembled. Many shops in the central area are closed on the 17th.
While tourism bureaus make much of the parade, it is the three nights leading up to it that make Gion Matsuri a three-star, worth-the-voyage spectacle in our humble opinion.
Our advice: plan well ahead, as lodgings will be in short supply. Spend your days exploring the serene temples of Higashiyama along Kyoto’s eastern perimeter, making plenty of stops along the way to refresh yourself with mugicha and Uji-gori. Take a late-afternoon nap to restore your energies before plunging into the orderly mayhem that makes festivals in Japan such exciting yet unintimidating spectacles. It’s an experience you will treasure for the rest of your life.
For more history, practical advice, and insider tips on visiting Kyoto, be sure to check out the Kyoto chapter of Gateway to Japan, available exclusively at https://gatewaytojapan.net/.
Photo credits: Previous page, WolfieWolf, Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0,
