Yasaka-jinja (Gion Matsuri)

photo by Jakub Hałun · CC BY 4.0

photo by Immanuelle · CC BY-SA 4.0

Its July festival has been on the UNESCO heritage list since 2009 and lasts a month, not a day.

The Gion Matsuri, the festival of Yasaka Shrine, takes up the whole of July: it is not a one-day parade but a month of rites that culminate in two processions of floats (山鉾, yamahoko) – huge wooden structures, some more than 20 metres tall, pulled by hand through the streets of the centre – on the 17th and the 24th. Thirteen of the floats carry tapestries and carpets imported from the seventeenth century onwards from China, Persia, India and even from an old Belgian manufactory, so precious that they have earned the festival the nickname ‘travelling museum’. The rite has been UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2009.

Its origins go back to 869, when a procession was organised to quell an epidemic; it has been repeated ever since, except for interruptions for wars and the recent pandemic, and has become one of Kyoto's three great festivals, together with the Jidai Matsuri and the Aoi Matsuri.

ℹ️ Yasaka Shrine is always accessible and free. The two float processions set off at 9:00 on 17 July (23 floats) and at 9:30 on 24 July (11 floats); on the preceding evenings (宵山, yoiyama, from the 14th to the 16th and from the 21st to the 23rd) the floats are displayed and lit up in the streets, with food stalls.

🚉 Kyoto Kawaramachi · 11 min walk

Sources: ja.kyoto.travel · online.bunka.go.jp

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