If you were to name the most familiar scenes in school anime, summer festivals would certainly make the list. And when you think of a summer festival, what comes to mind first? Yukata, festival stalls, fireworks? Have scenes such as Kuroneko’s summer date in Oreimo, or Reina saying “I want to be someone special” in Sound! Euphonium, given summer festivals a dreamlike glow for you? Or has the endless Bon dancing in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya left you unable to get excited about these summer celebrations, so evocative of Japanese tradition? If you are still curious about Japanese summer festivals, let us offer a brief, broad introduction. Since Japanese festivals share common cultural features, we will take Gion Matsuri as our main example, exploring the cultural elements it contains and examining how festivals help preserve and pass on traditional Japanese culture.
Matsuri, or festivals, are among Japan’s most important traditional activities and form a significant part of its traditional culture. They bring together many elements of Japanese culture and are important to understanding it. Kyoto’s Gion Matsuri is Japan’s largest and best-known festival; with its rich cultural atmosphere, it is a particularly representative example. The festival lasts an entire month, with major processions on July 17 (Saki Matsuri, the early festival) and July 24 (Ato Matsuri, the later festival). Dating back as far as 869 CE, Gion Matsuri was also inscribed on UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list in 2009.2
I. The Origins and Development of Gion Matsuri
Gion Matsuri originated in 869 CE, during the Jōgan era of Emperor Seiwa’s reign in the Heian period. Japan’s population was growing rapidly at the time, and an epidemic broke out, claiming many lives. Lacking adequate medical knowledge, people attributed the disease to the workings of resentful spirits. To appease them, they held goryō-e, rites for pacifying vengeful spirits, at Yasaka Shrine, praying for blessings and relief from disaster. Since Japan was then divided into sixty-six small feudal domains, each was required to build a hoko float and send it to Shinsen’en in Kyoto to pray for the expulsion of the plague deities. In its early years, the Gion Goryō-e was held only when an epidemic occurred. Only after 970 did it become an annual event and spread among the populace. Gion Matsuri was suspended for more than twenty years because of the Ōnin War and did not resume until the fifth year of the Meiō era, 1496 CE.3 Thereafter, it began to shed its official character, becoming increasingly rooted in popular life and increasingly commercial.
The transformation of festivals from religious rites into recreational and commercial activities involving ordinary people was caused by the rapid development of the productive forces and the growing power of the merchant class. I divide this transformation in Japanese festivals into three stages:
Stage One: Broader Popular Participation and a Greater Emphasis on Entertainment
As society stabilized during Japan’s Heian period, surplus productive capacity meant that people were no longer occupied solely with production and began seeking a wider range of entertainment. The public gradually began to take part in festivals. “One of the most important changes in Japanese festivals, put simply, was the appearance of spectators. That is, some of those attending did not share a common faith; they came to watch the festival from an aesthetic standpoint.”4 Popular participation added an element of entertainment to traditional festivals, and their activities subsequently became more varied.
Stage Two: Expansion and Commercialization
The productive forces developed further, population density increased, and cities began to take shape. Industry and commerce flourished in these concentrations of population, and the merchant class grew powerful enough to organize large-scale events. Kyoto was one such city. At this stage, Gion Matsuri became more firmly rooted in popular life, with the city’s merchants taking over responsibility for organizing it. The grand festivities also offered merchants a good opportunity to do business. From the Azuchi–Momoyama period through the Edo period, festival floats acquired much greater social prominence. Merchants invested considerable money and labor in decorating mikoshi, or portable shrines, and festival floats, and in preparing more varied performances. All this made the ancient religious observance more secular and more pleasing to watch. For the merchants, it was also the best opportunity to display their wealth and social standing.
Stage Three: Urbanization and Modernization
From the mid-twentieth century onward, with Japan’s transition to an urban society largely complete, festivals and ritual celebrations held in cities continued to increase, while traditional festivals and rites in rural areas also came under urban influence, gradually changing their practices and forms. Modern festivals took shape during this period. Gion Matsuri, too, settled into its present form as a grand celebration lasting an entire month. Matsudaira Makoto summarized five important characteristics of modern festivals:5
- A shift from a local basis toward openness;
- A structure of multiple meanings: watching, participating, and displaying;
- Flexible intension and open extension;
- An open network structure and a capacity for proliferation;
- Structural changes in the non-everyday/everyday relationship, and the loss or absence of goal-directedness.
II. What Gion Matsuri Involves
Gion Matsuri’s observances fall into two main parts. The first consists of the various ceremonies held within Yasaka Shrine, particularly those in its main sanctuary. These have a strongly Shinto character and are generally not open to ordinary residents or tourists. The second consists of ritual activities held where the floats are stationed in their respective neighborhoods, together with public entertainment and exuberant festivities such as Yoiyama—the evenings leading up to the processions—the Saki Matsuri, and the Ato Matsuri. These culminate in the yamaboko procession, also called the float procession: yamaboko is the collective term for the two main types of float, yama and hoko. Residents and tourists alike can take part in these activities.
Table 1. Gion Matsuri schedule* (compiled from Wikipedia’s Gion Matsuri entry).
| Date | Events |
|---|---|
| July 1 | Kippu-iri, the opening observances; Naginata-hoko-chō Osendo, the neighborhood’s shrine visit and prayers. The festival begins. |
| July 2 | Drawing of lots; shrine visits by the float neighborhoods. |
| July 7 | Shrine visit by the Ayagasa-hoko’s chigo, children with ceremonial roles. |
| July 10 | Cutting paper ritual offerings; erecting the hoko floats; purification of water for ritual use; welcoming-lantern procession; Mikoshi-arai, ritual washing of the portable shrines. |
| July 10–13 | Saki Matsuri: setting up for Yoiyama and erecting the hoko floats. Dismantling and storing the yama floats; assembling the hoko floats and hanging their decorative textiles. |
| July 13 | Shrine visits by Takahashi-chō, the chigo, and the Kuze chigo; Saki Matsuri: first pulling of the hoko floats, construction of the yama floats, and their first ceremonial carrying. |
| July 14 | Ritual offerings at Nakanochō; Saki Matsuri: Yoiyoiyoiyama, the third evening before the procession. |
| July 15 | Erecting sacred bamboo poles; offering of a ceremonial knife performance; offerings of traditional performing arts; Saki Matsuri: Yoimiya-sai, the eve observance, and Yoiyoiyama, the second evening before the procession. |
| July 16 | Tea-offering ceremony; erecting Hōen’s sacred sakaki standard; opening the Mitarai well; Shinken Haitai, the sacred-sword rite; Iwami Kagura, ritual dance; Saki Matsuri: Yoiyama, the evening before the procession; Yoimiya Shinshin Hōnō Shinji, eve performances offered to the deities; Hiyori Kagura, music offered in prayer for fine weather. |
| July 17 | Saki Matsuri: yamaboko procession (a major event). Departure ceremony for the portable-shrine procession. |
| July 18–20 | Ato Matsuri: setting up for Yoiyama. |
| July 20 | Senjō-shiki, ceremony conferring ritual appointments. |
| July 21 | Ato Matsuri: Yoiyoiyoiyama, the third evening before the procession. |
| July 22 | Ato Matsuri: Yoiyoiyama, the second evening before the procession. |
| July 23 | Erecting sacred bamboo poles; tea-offering ceremony; offering of music on the biwa lute; Ato Matsuri: Yoiyama, the evening before the procession. |
| July 24 | Ato Matsuri: yamaboko procession; Hanagasa, the flower-parasol procession; sacred sakaki ceremony; Kankō-sai, the deities’ return festival. |
| July 25 | Offering of kyōgen comic theater. |
| July 28 | Purification of water for ritual use; ritual washing of the portable shrines. |
Putting the ritual’s origins together with its sequence of events gives us a general understanding of how Gion Matsuri unfolds. First comes the procession of yama floats on the seventeenth, representing the appearance of evil spirits and the ravages of disease. The deities then set out from Yasaka Shrine in portable shrines on their “inspection round.” They arrive at the otabisho, their temporary resting place, and remain there for a week, expelling malign forces and suppressing evil spirits. Next comes the hoko procession, signifying the deities’ descent into the human world and the union of humans and deities. Grand celebrations follow until, once the evil spirits’ retreat has finally been confirmed, the deities are escorted back to their proper place at Yasaka Shrine.6
We can see, then, that Gion Matsuri, which originated as a religious observance, still has a strongly religious character rooted in Japan’s Shinto tradition, even though people’s reasons for taking part now have little connection with religion. Beyond their shared religious elements, festivals take place in the neighborhoods where local people live, incorporating local history, culture, and customs and thus acquiring distinctive local features. Traditional arts, clothing, and foods are everywhere. Festivals have become not only religious observances but also occasions for commerce, entertainment, tourism, and the celebration of local customs. This form of festival activity has preserved and passed on many elements of Japanese culture relatively intact.
Summer festivals contain a wealth of cultural elements, such as the masks, yukata, snacks, and lanterns shown here in Free! Fireworks, too, are an indispensable part of festival entertainment.
III. Preserving and Passing On Traditional Culture through Gion Matsuri
Japan’s effective protection of Gion Matsuri owes much to several factors, notably more than a century of managing intangible heritage protection within a legal framework and the active involvement of voluntary organizations formed on people’s own initiative.
Japanese festivals are organized, attended, passed on, and protected by local people. Here, the male lead in Tsukigakirei (right) practices with local students in preparation for the Kawagoe Festival procession.
1. Policy and Law
Japan is a world leader in protecting cultural heritage through law and policy. As early as the beginning of the Meiji period, it established its first cultural heritage protection legislation. Today, it has developed a comprehensive legal framework—including the “Cultural Relics Protection Law,” the Order of Culture Ordinance, the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, and the Ancient Temples and Shrines Preservation Law—to preserve and pass on everything from historic sites, old buildings, and streetscapes to folk cultural heritage and traditional crafts. At the same time, the government’s supportive public stance has helped the relevant activities and their participants gain widespread recognition and corresponding social standing. This, too, has laid a firm foundation for the transmission and flourishing of festival traditions.
2. Community Organizations
Japan’s community-based intangible heritage practices are all protected by organizations that people establish on their own initiative and join voluntarily. These are called hozonkai, or preservation associations. These relatively stable community organizations are not constrained by government or public finances. When several preservation associations join together to organize large-scale activities, the larger body they form is called a rengōkai, or federation. In the case of Gion Matsuri, the Gion Matsuri Yamahoko Federation is based in Kawaramachi, Kyoto Prefecture, and has thirty-five preservation associations under it, though currently only thirty-two take part in the processions. The preservation associations bear primary responsibility for organizing Gion Matsuri’s activities.
The structure formed by these associations and their federation combines vertical management with horizontal cooperation, providing important organizational support for the festival’s growth and prosperity. First, each preservation association has the right to act independently. Full respect for their community-based character and autonomy allows them to devise all kinds of creative activities in keeping with their communities’ wishes. Second, the associations also compete with one another, each hoping to promote its own community’s culture. This competitive spirit keeps traditional culture renewing itself and moving forward.
Sponsorship is the festival’s main source of funding. Shown here is the online crowdfunding campaign launched by the Gion Matsuri Yamahoko Federation, a public-interest incorporated foundation, for the 2018 Kyoto Gion Matsuri float events.
3. Spiritual Needs and Technological Preservation
The religious meanings and traditional culture embodied in festivals are closely bound up with the spiritual life of the Japanese people. Like the Spring Festival—Chinese New Year—in China, Gion Matsuri is an indispensable part of life for the people of Kyoto. This spiritual need for the festival is another important reason why people participate in and protect it of their own accord, passing traditional culture down to the present, deliberately or otherwise.
Interestingly, advanced technology has also played an increasingly important role in cultural heritage preservation in recent years. Efforts to protect Gion Matsuri using a range of new technologies have become a pioneering example of intangible heritage preservation worldwide. Japanese research teams have used virtual reality, motion capture, laser surveying, and three-dimensional sound fields to preserve Gion Matsuri digitally and make it possible to recreate it. This is undoubtedly a positive and effective advance in cultural heritage preservation.
Summer festivals are thus an important and indispensable part of the Japanese people’s cultural heritage.
References
- Zhang Lin. “Management through Law and the Use of Advanced Technology in Intangible Heritage Protection: The Case of Japan’s Gion Matsuri.” Da Wutai [The Great Stage], no. 6 (2018), pp. 86–89.
- Wang Xiaokui. “Festival Rites in Modern Japanese Society: An Urban Folklore Perspective.” Wenhua Yichan [Cultural Heritage], no. 6 (2018), pp. 83–90.
- Ye Tao. “Gion Matsuri as a Vehicle for Traditional Religious Culture: Field Notes from Gion Matsuri in Kyoto, Japan.” Minsu Yanjiu [Folklore Studies], no. 6 (2018), pp. 148–153, 156.
- He Rong. “An Inquiry into Japanese Ritual Culture: The Case of Kyoto’s Gion Matsuri.” Degree thesis, 2012.
- Chen Zonghua. “Protecting Intangible Cultural Heritage in Everyday Life: The Case of Gion Matsuri, a Japanese Intangible Folk Cultural Property.” Journal of Nanjing Arts Institute (Fine Arts & Design), no. 1 (2011), pp. 23–26, 177.
- L. Li, W. Choi, K. Hachimura, K. Yano, T. Nishiura, and H. T. Tanaka, “Virtual yamahoko parade experience system with vibration simulation,” ITE Transactions on Media Technology and Applications, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 248–255, 2014.
Editor’s note: How lovely, how lovely. I want to go to Gion Matsuri too…