The evening festival features night stalls and fireworks. The main festival showcases traditional performances, and the portable shrines and four floats parade through the town.

The Gion Matsuri at Yasaka Shrine is held every year on the same days, July 16 and 17, as the Yamaboko Junko of Kyoto’s Yasaka Shrine. On the 16th, there are night stalls and donated fireworks. On the 17th, after the annual festival ceremony, traditional performances, and mochi throwing, the portable shrine and four magnificent floats called ‘danjiri’ as well as beautifully decorated sacred boats parade through the town.

Yasaka Shrine in Shishikui and the Gion Festival

The Yasaka Shrine in Shishikui, Kaiyo-cho enshrines Susanoo no Mikoto as its deity and, along with the Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto and the Nunakuma Shrine in Tomoura-cho, Fukuyama City, Hiroshima Prefecture, it is known as one of Japan’s three Gion shrines. It has long been cherished and revered by the common people.

Division by function

The fishing boats of Yahata Maru are handled by fishery workers, while the assembly of Oyamayama and Koyamayama is overseen by Satobun (10 regions west of Kubo), with the people from the Nibihara area presenting the towing ropes every year.

 

Also, the groups that will bring out three danjiri are respectively: the Kinpeinaka (a group of carpenters and plasterers participating in the mikoshi procession), the Akindonaka (a group of merchants from Nishi-machi), and the Washizuminaka (a combined group of farmers from Nishi-machi’s mountain group and blacksmith’s town).

The child’s Noh performance is called Gion Ko, and it is performed by the children of Nishimachi. The series of events where they pull the Oyama and Koyama floats and showcase the child’s dance is the centerpiece of the Shishiku Gion Festival, which is a localized version of the Kyoto Gion Festival’s floats.

Mikoshi at the beach