The mikoshi: the kami on the move
At the heart of most festivals is a journey. The kami of a shrine is taken out of its sanctuary and carried through the streets it protects, often to a temporary resting place, the otabisho, and back again. Nearly every shrine festival has some form of this procession.
The kami travels in a mikoshi, a portable shrine. Most are made of black-lacquered wood with gilt metal fittings, square, hexagonal or octagonal, with a roof topped by a golden phoenix or an onion-shaped finial. The shrine rests on long wooden poles, and the carriers lift it on their shoulders. Small ones need a handful of people, large ones dozens.
Watch how it moves. At the Sanja Matsuri in Asakusa, about a hundred mikoshi are bounced up and down and swung from side to side as the carriers chant, shaking up the kami’s power. Elsewhere the procession is slow and solemn. The rule for visitors is the same everywhere: the mikoshi has right of way.
The idea is old. When the Great Buddha of Nara was completed in the 8th century, the kami of Usa Hachiman Shrine was carried all the way from Kyushu to the capital in an imperial palanquin.
Floats: dashi, yamaboko, danjiri, yatai
Where the mikoshi carries the kami, the floats are offerings that go with it: gifts of music, craft and pride from each neighbourhood. The general word is dashi, but every region has its own name and style:
- Yamaboko — the towering floats of Kyoto’s Gion Matsuri, with a tall spear-like pole on top, assembled before the festival and taken apart right after the parade, because they gather up the spirits of disease and carry them out of the city.
- Yatai — floats with a roof, often carrying musicians, as in Takayama. (The same word also means a food stall.)
- Danjiri — heavy carved wooden carts of the Osaka area, hauled at a run and swung around corners at Kishiwada.
- Hikiyama — “pulled mountains”, the name used in many towns, such as Karatsu.
Many floats are works of art, covered in carving, lacquer, metalwork and embroidered hangings, and are owned and cared for by their neighbourhoods for centuries. At Takayama and Inuyama, karakuri, mechanical puppets worked by hidden strings, perform on the top tier. Several towns keep real floats on show all year in museums; the festival pages list them under “Around the festival”.
Music: hayashi
Floats and mikoshi move to hayashi, festival music of flutes, drums and small gongs. Each festival has its own tunes. In Kyoto, the slow Gion-bayashi played on the floats is the sound of July; in Chichibu, drummers inside the floats play at full force as teams haul them up a steep slope.
Lanterns and light
Many of the most famous festivals happen at night:
- Nebuta — in Aomori, huge figures of painted paper over a frame, lit from inside, are pulled through the streets.
- Kantō — in Akita, performers balance tall bamboo poles hung with dozens of lit lanterns on their palms, foreheads and shoulders.
- Lantern floats — at Chichibu and many other night festivals, floats glow with paper lanterns.
Fire
Fire purifies. At the Kurama Fire Festival, villagers carry blazing pine torches, taimatsu, through the streets of a mountain village; at Nachi, giant torches meet the fan-decorated mikoshi on the steps below the waterfall; at Tōdai-ji’s Omizutori, embers rain down from torches carried along the balcony of a hall.
Dances and rites for the kami
- Kagura — sacred music and dance performed for the kami, often retelling myths.
- Shishimai — the lion dance, in which dancers inside a lion costume with a large wooden head drive away evil.
- Yabusame — mounted archery, offered at Hachiman shrines and others.
Next time you see a procession, ask the three questions that explain most festivals: where is the kami, where is it going, and what is being offered to it?
