Gion Festival at Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto

Selected, Not Designated, in 1959

Gion Festival at Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto (京都八坂神社の祗園祭), held at Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto Prefecture, was selected on 1 March 1959 as an intangible folk cultural property for which measures such as record-making should be taken. Its selection number is 1.

This is a selection, not a designation. That category picks out practices whose record ought to be made and kept, and it sits apart from the framework of designation.

The classification is manners and customs, and within that, festivals of belief. The criterion applied reads: showing, in its origin and content, the character of the fundamental living culture of the Japanese people, and typical of it.

The field for the body charged with safeguarding reads not specified. No particular organisation is named as the holder.

One Festival Across Three Categories

Three notes stand in the Agency's record. The same festival is treated separately under different names.

First: the floats that process in this event were designated Important Tangible Folk Cultural Properties on 23 May 1962, under the name Gion Festival floats.

Second: the event was designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property on 3 February 1979, under the name Float Event of the Kyoto Gion Festival.

Third: the event was inscribed in 2009 on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The floats as objects and the float event as an act are handled apart, the one tangible and the other intangible. The record covered here, under the name Gion Festival at Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto, is the earlier selection of 1959.

Four Moments, Three Names

Set out in order, the sequence runs as follows.

1959: selected as Gion Festival at Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto. 1962: the floats designated as Gion Festival floats. 1979: the event designated as Float Event of the Kyoto Gion Festival. 2009: inscribed on the UNESCO list.

Within fifty years one festival was taken up four times under four frameworks, and under three different names.

The selection came first. The festival was picked out as something to be recorded, then three years later the floats as objects, and seventeen years after that the event as an act.

The Agency closes its commentary with a note: the account is based on what was written at the time of selection. That the text belongs to 1959 is stated outright.

When the Floats Took Shape

The Agency sets out how the festival came together, in stages.

It began with the Gion goryoe of the Heian capital; the mountain and halberd floats were brought into form between the Nanbokucho and Muromachi periods; and in the Momoyama period imported hangings came to be draped around them and no expense was spared on metal fittings and carving.

Three stages, then: the origin in the goryoe, the forming of the floats from Nanbokucho into Muromachi, and the lavishing of ornament in the Momoyama.

Imported hangings is worth pausing on. What decorated the floats came from outside; goods not made in the country were used to dress the festival.

The content of the event is recorded too: from the drawing of lots on the second, through the float procession on the seventeenth, to the Gion music, it holds a great variety. At the time of selection the event ran from 1 to 29 July each year.

Influence on Other Festivals

The assessment closes on how far that influence reached.

The splendid procession of the floats in particular is said to have exerted great influence on Gion and Tenno festivals throughout the country.

Is said to: the Agency puts it as report rather than as fact, and asserts nothing.

The related entries list the float event at Hita, the Gion festival at Shishikui Yasaka Shrine, the barge event of the Sunari festival, the barge event of the Owari Tsushima Tenno festival and the float festival at Nagahama, among others. Festivals of the same line exist across the country, and the question is where this one stands among them.

As for attending, the dates given at the time of selection are 1 to 29 July each year. Dates and content can change, so check with Yasaka Shrine or Kyoto City before travelling.