On the 17th of July, I skipped school to go see the parade-thing for the Gion festival. There was a fuckload of people, but not as bad as it usually is, or so they tell me.

By the way, I realized that maybe it makes more sense to write text about a picture above the picture, rather than below it. I’m still sort of torn on this one, but I’m gonna give it a shot. Here’s The New Me!

As you can see below, the car lanes were empty of cars. And people. Except those who were a part of the festival. We regular folks were standing on the opposing sides watching. From what I saw on TV, I thought everyone was just running around in a big mass of people helping out carrying the things, but that might have been some other festival. Anyways…

Each one of these things came with a troupe of people doing things. In fact, the big carriages (hokos) had loads of people. What you see below is the very first hoko, Naginataboko (長刀鉾). The guy holding the big banner has the name of the float/carriage written on the banner. Each hoko had a “flag-carrier” like this.

As you see below, these things required a lot of people to move! (This is the same hoko as above.) The people are wearing rather traditional clothing as you can see, and there was a feeling that each float and its people were a group on its own, slightly apart from the others. Every group seemed to have its own style, both on the outside, clothing and decorations, and on the inside, in how they behaved and acted.

As you can see below, a lot of people are sitting in, and on, the hoko as it is being pulled. Unfortunately I didn’t catch it (too far away), but if you look at the center of the “balcony”, there’s a little boy sitting there in very elaborate garbs.

At the beginning of the festival, there was this white rope hanging across the road, crossing the path for the hoko. The float was pulled up close to the rope, after which the little boy pulled out a katana and cut the rope, allowing the hoko passage. Pretty cool, but I couldn’t really see anything from where I was standing.

Standing at the front, you can see two guys dressed in white, leaning outwards holding a rope. These guys were directing the hokos, sort of. They had this really cool series of movements involving fans to tell the pullers to start pulling and stuff.

Naginataboko, from the behind. The detail put into these things is unbelievable.

There were a lot of kids involved in the festival. I was worried they’d succumb to the heat, but they seemed fine.

Number 2 out of 32 — Mousouyama (孟宗山)! (No, I didn’t take pictures of every one of them! In fact, I didn’t even see all of them.)

Mousouyama, the actual float, not just the flag this time.

As you can see, the “feeling” of this one is completely different from the other ones. Those carpets or whatever they are, sure look sweet.

Number 5, Kankoboko (函谷鉾). Magnificent piece.

A lot of music — or, sounds — were involved in the Gion festival. In fact, stores all over Kyoto (not only the city but the suburbs as well) played Gion festival “drum-recordings” in the speakers inside the food stores. To remind people of the festival, perhaps. Or maybe just to liven up the day. The float-inhabitants, or however you wanna call them, were into music too. In the picture below, a bunch of people are playing flutes. I adore their tails. You just wanna jump out and grab one and pull.

Two words — “cool dragon”. I would really like to have that tapestry for my birthday.

Okay, that’s quite tall.

My mom (and some of the Skotos people, I bet) would kill baby seals to get her hands on some of these clothes. She’s a drama teacher. What else can I say?

Same one, from the behind.

If you read the previous post (Gion part 1) I mentioned that some of the big floats weren’t “big” per se, just different from all the others. There’s one particular one with dancers. The float itself is small, but the dancing makes it a hoko anyway. Below is the “main” dancer, from what I can tell. I love his outfit. His dance was pretty cool too.

These guys were a part of the dancing hoko as well.

We actually made a movie of the dance, but I won’t upload that here.

Anyway, this is a selection of the pictures I took. If I’d had a real camera I’d have gotten more and better. I’ll get one before the next big festival I attend.

The end!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 8:36 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.