Within Kyoto’s extraordinary Gion Festival, deities, myths, and legends intermingle with modern people and lifestyles, plus centuries of rich culture and history. The result is a unique, luxurious
universe, a neverending story that we continue to co-create. The Gion Festival has long only been understood by a small community of insiders. This guidebook introduces the Gion Festival’s magic and majesty to English speakers. Welcome.
The Gion Festival is a Shintō festival, and Shintō is Japan’s indigenous spiritual tradition, a kind of animism or shamanism. It translates to “path of the spirits,” and there are more than 80,000 Shintō shrines in the country. Abundant in deities, one proverb holds that Shintō honors eight million gods. In this way, Shintō is very spiritually open: it honors nature spirits, the spirits of some remarkable humans, as well as archetypal entities, not so different from Mayan, Yoruban, or Greek gods.
Consequently, we can see spiritual practices all around us at the Gion Festival today. In many ways, it’s an extensive, month-long purification ritual, including countless ceremonies and prayers to an array of supernatural beings from different spiritual traditions. In particular, the Yasaka Shrine’s portable Mikoshi shrines and the Gion Festival yamaboko floats purify the city streets, neighborhoods, and people, creating a space free from harmful spirits and the plagues and other misfortune they might bring. And what are all the prayers for? A year of safety, health, and general protection from harm. In other words, the Gion Festival invites a year of goodness to Kyoto City, its residents, and visitors. Though Japan often gets stereotyped as a homogenous country, it’s very spiritually and culturally diverse.
Japanese people and culture generally accept whatever works into their spiritual cosmography, and that brings varied cultural influences with it. Gion Gion Festival floats purify Kyoto streets in the July 24 Ato Matsuri procession. Festival patrons were keen to impress the populace with their sophistication and exotic foreign treasures: in centuries gone by, artwork often referred to philosophy and literature.
Look closely and you’ll see signs of Shintō, Zen, Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Greek mythology. In this sense, the Gion Festival shines as both one of Kyoto’s longest-standing traditions as well as a remarkably international event.
Speaking of goodness, the Gion Festival is definitely also an opportunity for good fun. It’s likely that
most people at the Gion Festival are enjoying them selves in a worldly way, rather than having a particularly spiritual experience. And in a city with festivals year-round, the Gion Festival is Kyoto’s most famous and popular celebration, generating prosperity for Kyoto Chinese Taoist Immortals contemplate the yin- yang symbol in this textile at Hoshō Yama.
Students at Ikenobo Junior College enjoying being next door to Niwatori Boko. City, Kyoto Prefecture, and the country. More than a million visitors come to the Gion Festival each year to see and be seen, sample the amazing street food, and be dazzled by the magnificent floats and portable mikoshi shrines. Order Now: https://amzn.to/4449CiT
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